


Dead Letter Office

by a_different_equation



Category: Bartleby the Scrivener - Herman Melville, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Office, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arthur Conan Doyle Canon References, Dead Letters, Epistolary, Fix-It of Sorts, John Watson is Sherlock's Boss, John Watson's Blog, M/M, Military Backstory, PTSD John, Pre-Canon, References to Alan Turing, Sherlock Holmes and Drug Use, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson Being Idiots, Sherlock is a Mess, Texting, Writer John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2018-11-15 14:58:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 21,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11233392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_different_equation/pseuds/a_different_equation
Summary: John Watson comes home from the war, gets a new job and meets Sherlock Holmes through Mike Stamford. Same tale since 1891, except this time it’s 2008, John is Sherlock’s boss, and they work together at the Dead Letter Office in London.It's not a love story, until it finally is. (AU-ish/fusion with Herman Melville's 'Bartleby')





	1. Nostalgia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [May_Shepard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/May_Shepard/gifts), [redscudery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redscudery/gifts), [doctornerdington](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornerdington/gifts).



> Hello dear reader,
> 
> this story was over three years in the making. I tried to post during the Sherlock Summer Serial, then another edit in January, but it did not work out. This fan fiction was close to turn into a "dead letter" itself. However, after an interlude with "To the Ends of the Earth", I had new energy and some distance. Therefore, hopefully, it's done at last :)  
> Happy reading!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson comes home from the war, gets a new job and meets Sherlock Holmes through Mike Stamford. Same tale since 1891, except this time it's 2008, John is Sherlock's boss, and they work together at the Dead Letter Office in London. The Game is On!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nostalgia is the oldest name for PTSD (= Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Austrian physician Josef Leopold (1761) wrote about „nostalgia“ among soldiers. Among those who were exposed to military trauma, some reported missing home, feeling sad, sleep problems, and anxiety.

I am a middle-aged man.

The nature of my employment, for the last decade, has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom, of yet, nothing, at least that I know of, has even been written. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and, if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep.

But I waive the biographies of all other men, for a few passages in the life of Sherlock Holmes, who was the strangest (but best and wisest) man I have ever saw, or heard of.

 

Let us begin, dear readers, with the beginning. “You shouldn’t theorize before you have all data”, as Holmes stated countless times. The story about Sherlock Holmes, and to some extent, of me, started many years before our first meeting.

 

OOOOOOOOOOO

 

I was a soldier in Her Majesty's Army, registered straight after medical school, deployed to the battlefield shortly afterwards. The war was dark, full of violence and gore, but not without a special kind of beauty. Until I met Sherlock Holmes, I never witnessed anything quite like that again. The camaraderie, blood pumping through my veins, the adrenalin, the constant alert, the danger: I loved it all, with all my heart, and I hated it, with all my heart; I have never felt so alive until the day I was shot.

It was my shoulder, an actual wound, but nothing mortal. When I thought I was dying on the hot desert of Afghanistan, I prayed, “Dear God, let me live”. I survived. I regretted my – what I supposed to be last words – rather early. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was the diagnosis and I was honourably discharged. Though my army career was effectively terminated then, it took another quarter of a year before I was back in London.

London was hospitable, in the way that only the biggest cities can be. I was alone in the middle of a crowd, solitary among multitudes, and I could have been lost forever. I was surviving on a pension that barely kept me fed and housed, and even then, I was living beyond my means. My hands shook too badly to recommend me for a position at the hospital, and my nerves were too shattered to guarantee a full night’s sleep. I woke more often than not with the sound of gunfire ringing in my ears.

By the beginning of 2008, I was convinced that my habits were not sustainable, but I refused to leave my new urban home. There was not a thing for me outside London—no family to count on, no friends devoted enough to offer support—and so I knew I had to make do where I was. I would have to find a place other than my hotel. _But who’d want me for a flatmate?_ _,_ I thought.

It was only a few days after I had made this pronouncement to me that Mike Stamford, an old acquaintance of mine from my days training at Bart’s, spotted me in a crowd at the Criterion. One moment I was utterly alone, and the next his round, familiar face seemed to materialise in front of me. It was January the 29th of 2008.

Mike Stamford recommended me as the Head of Dead Letter Office in London. Barely a week later, I would start my duty. Not even a month later, Sherlock Holmes would enter my life. Mike Stamford would recommend him as my personal assistant. I hired him on the spot because I wanted him.

On January the 29th of 2008, Mike Stamford recommended me as the head of dead letter office in London. Barely a week later, I would start my duty. Not even a month later, Sherlock Holmes would enter my life. Mike Stamford would recommend him as my personal assistant. I hired him on the spot because I wanted him.

On January the 29th of 2009, I would kiss Sherlock Holmes in The Dead Letter Office and would call it a mistake. Barely a week later, Mycroft Holmes would order me to move in 221B Baker Street because instead of living there, Sherlock Holmes would choose to house in the office. Not even a month later, around Valentine’s Day in 2009, I would consider it best days of my life.

Until everything went to hell.

I doubt that January the 29th of 2010 will change a thing. After all, Sherlock and I had so many chances, I made so many mistakes, however, I am a hopelessly romantic, therefore, dear reader, welcome to my biggest adventure of my life: My years with Mr Sherlock Holmes.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

However, before introducing Sherlock – my very own Bartleby – , as he first appeared to me, it seems fit to continue with the dead letters office itself; because some such description is indispensable to an adequate understanding of the chief character about to be presented.

The building of our dead letter office is typical of London’s public service buildings: the grandeur from times long past; a bit intimidating and inviting all the same; metal and glass thrown into the mix. There is the omnipotent “CCTV in action”. The next Tube station is not far down the road. Many coffee shops, some tourists, mostly commuters. It is in the City of London, so it is not that busy besides the work hours. Our library and the archive is stocked with old volumes; dust dancing in the air; the typical smell of decaying paper. We even have old wood floors, and grand paintings from Post-War-Times in the entrance, and we prefer to write by hand than to type.

Dead letters are letters that are impossible to deliver. There are various reasons for such an incidence. Here, in our office in London, we specialized in a certain type of dead letters: the ones that should have found “home” during the Second World War and on-going Cold War. So, when fate struck; or, more accurately, a cover was blown, a bomb fell, or a hostage situation went downhill etc.; we do our best to bring their letters “home”.

We are achieving that with a team of specialists and the use of modern technologies. We cooperate with archives and museums; we outsource our work regularly to well-trained experts around the globe; we work with scholars, scientists, and students. And we are dealing with more fans of conspiracy theories that we wished to and with more so-claimed writers who wants to turn us, or more an exaggerate version of our work, into the next John Le Carré novel.

I worked there five days a week, from eight until six, sometimes even later. My job as the head of London’s dead letter office was like running a madhouse. I guess I was not hired because I had actual combat experience, but because I had proven to have a temper and to have an air of authority.

When my team (Sally Donovan, Phillip Anderson and Molly Hooper) pitted the first fight over budget and period and whatever nonsense, I reminded them of my own fate: That I could come home from the war, that I could deliver my letter to my sweetheart in person, that not everyone was that lucky. I reminded my employees of my the tale; about how Mary got all teary eyes when she visited me in the hospital, battered and bruised, but home at last, and alive. I did not mention to my team how it turned out with Mary because it was an unnecessary detail.

Instead, I reminded them about the work we do, that we are the last hope, because when it is not possible for the men to come home, then we do one last miracle. Because dead letter offices believe in the impossible. We at the dead letter office work in the name of the dead, who are gone but not forgotten, who are still missed and loved. As if, the dead could say in the end, “Thank you for believing.” We turn “lost cause” into “case closed”.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

One morning, a young man stood upon my office threshold. I can see that figure now – his expensive looking, probably tailor-made suit, a cosy looking scarf which matched the colour of his button-down, and a coat that resembled the iconic one Oscar Wilde used to wear. He was overall strikingly gorgeous. The man was Sherlock Holmes. After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged him. I gave him a short tour through the office and then pointed at his workspace.

“You know what your work supposes to entail?”, I asked.

“I search for the answers for which no one remembers the questions.”

“That is a rather... unusual way to put it, but...”

Before I could finish my sentence, Sherlock interrupted me: “I am right. You and the others would describe it dully but that is because you are idiots. What we, no, what I am going to do is to solve a mystery. And I assume we can both agree that there are hardly more fascinating mysteries to find than delivering letters everybody else think of terms of dead ones. ... Besides solving real crimes, of course, that is. However, as my brother made very clear to me that I should persuade a more suitable profession first, I guess, dead letters will have to be. So: When do I start?”

 

OOOOOOOOOO  
  


The good thing is when you work in The Dead Letter Office, and in particular, as the Head, you do not have to talk a lot. I asked Mike Stamford because I wanted a personal assistant to deal with the rest. You do not have to be Sherlock Holmes, who is a genius in his own right, to conclude that hiring Sherlock Holmes as my personal assistant was a stupid idea. It might have been the most stupid one I have had so far, and I invaded Afghanistan.  
  
It was not only that Sherlock Holmes was even worse at dealing with people than I was, or that he could talk – quite eloquently and with a beautiful voice – but the truth is that most people did not like had he had to say. Over the months, when he reduced his vocabulary almost exclusively to “I prefer not to,” and mostly only handed in his finished reports, I think everyone called me an idiot behind my back for not firing him (Nobody dared to call Sherlock that. He on the other hand, called me an idiot to my face).  
  
I mean, no one expected him to brew coffee or bring lunch (or, at least, I did not). Alternatively, especially after seeing his workspace, no one expected him to keep my workspace clean or my appointments in order. (I was lucky when he did not hack my personal computer AGAIN). He gave me frankly unhelpful advice about tobacco ash (I am not even a smoker) and he never hid the fact that he found my wardrobe abhorrent. Once, he commented on all my attempts at writing an article for a local newspaper (“Boring!” “Wrong!” “Dull!”). One day, he walked on top of all the furniture in the Archive because he claimed was the shorter way to get to a case file. Oh, and he got so frustrated once that he threw a coffee cup at a wall.  
  
I should have fired him (or, never hired him in the first place), or at least, transferred him to a research assistant (or, to create his own position, consultant, or something).

Sherlock Holmes was never really my personal assistant.  
  
The problem was not only that I did not really want him as my personal assistant.  
  
I wanted him as my personal assistant.  
  
I wanted _him_ , personally.

It might be immoral or unethical to hire someone because you fancy him (good, it is) but it is not as if it has never happened before. I tried to keep my emotions in check. Probably I failed because Sherlock Holmes can normally read people like an open book (oh, he found out about Molly’s crush on him in a heartbeat and about Donovan’s and Anderson’s on again, off again relationship even faster; both ended with emotions very much not in check). Therefore, he probably knew and was simply not interested. It is all fine.  
  
Because as I have talked repeatedly, Sherlock Holmes was the best employee, I have had. I might have lied to my therapist or to Mary and I might have been in denial from time to time but now, as it is over, why should I lie still?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. Kudos are love.


	2. Interlude (1): A Strange Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's epistolary time.

I. E-Mail Thread between **John Watson** and **Mike Stamford**

 

 **From** : john.watson@johnwatsonblog.co.uk

 **To** : mike.stamford@nhs.uk

 **Subject** : Me and the mad man [1]

 

Dear Mike,

 

Thanks so much for recommending Sherlock Holmes as my personal assistant. Really, I do not know what I have done without such a madman in my workspace. You told me that he is exactly what I needed. You said that we were “in a similar situation" [2]. I used to believe you (we are mates since we were students) but damn you, Mike.

 

When I first met Sherlock, he told me my life story. He could tell so much about me from my limp, my tan and my mobile phone.[3] Somehow he knew everything about me. He knew I’d served in Afghanistan and he knew I’d been invalided. He said my wound was psychosomatic. He even knew why I am working at the Dead Letter Office, despite the fact that you hadn’t told him. [4] I am in my late thirties, going strong to the big four, I was a doctor and a soldier, I had bad days. Nothing prepared me for this, Mike. Two seconds in, two minutes dialogue, two decades of my life deduced. He laid me bare. My good and my bad days, my sister’s drinking habits, her shade of a marriage, my bloody therapist.

It’s mad. I think I might be mad. He was certainly arrogant and really quite rude and he looks about 12 and he is clearly a bit public school, and, yes, I definitely think he might be mad but he was also strangely likeable. He was charming. It really was all just a bit strange. [5] He's fascinating. Arrogant, imperious, pompous. He’s not safe, I know that much. I’m not going to be bored. And yeah, he is probably most likely definitely mad. [6]

I don’t know how I’m meant to be writing this [7].

It is far past midnight and I definitely drank too much. And all I can think about is the fact that he will notice, even if I swallow some aspirin immediately. And maybe he even will deduce the reason for all of this. Because that’s the thing with him. It’s no use trying to hide what you are because Sherlock sees right through everyone and everything in seconds.[8]  HE will know it and maybe he will even blurt it out (he has a habit of doing such things (a bit not good) and it will be relief.

Because when he is saying it, it means that it is true what I am not willing to admit: that I am lost.

 

Answer if convenient.

If not answer anyway [9] (he has a way with words).

 

John.

* * *

 

 **From** : mike.stamford@nhs.uk

 **To** : john.watson@ johnwatsonblog.co.uk

 **Subject** : Re: Me and the mad man

 

I honestly thought it was a good idea. Want to go for a pint or two in our pub tonight? I think we both do not want to face such a conversation sober.

Mike

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

II. Text Thread between **Sherlock Holmes** and **Mycroft Holmes**

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:00

Mycroft, what do you want? I do not think that there is something in this world you, and your gigantic nose, are not able to sniffer out. So: Leave me alone. SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:01

Always so aggressive, Sherlock. There is no need to snap. I am simply interested. My little brother having a serious job for the first time after…  You know that I am worried about you, constantly.

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:02

I am not emotional. And I am aware of your “worry”, or, would you prefer the term “camera”? SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:02

Update, Sherlock.

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:02

So full of brotherly love, today, Mycroft. Is the diet not working (again)? SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:03

Please. And not your business.

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:03

It must be Christmas. Or not. SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:03

Update, Sherlock.

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:04

I am working. SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:04

I am aware. However, I hope you would go deeper.

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:07

Spying again, Mycroft? SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:07

What make you think that I would engage in such unpleasant business?

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:09

Work is good. I am clean. End of story. Have a nice day, Mycroft. Do not start a war before six. I want to catch a cab and it is difficult enough in the normal rush hour. SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:21

Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock.

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:25

Turing, Sherlock? Really? [10]

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:25

File attached.

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:25

What do you want, Mycroft? SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:25

Maybe giving you a little recap in British history, brother dear.

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:25

Or maybe pointing out how you and your government [unsent]

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:45

Interesting.

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:45

What? SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:45

You being … affected.

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:45

I am not affected. SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:45

As you would know.

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:45

And you… SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:50

Really, Sherlock, I somehow understand it: Misfit, genius, some social issues. There are some similarities.

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:50

Gay. SH

 

 **Mycroft Holmes** 18:50

Sherlock!

 

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:51

That was the word you and them searched for: Gay. Or rather male homosexual. And IF you want to point out that time proofed that they were wrong and that you THINK that he, me, or anybody else with “some similarities” find condolence or whatever pleasantries you and your government have in mind than I can simply say: NO. SH

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:51

And he deserved better.

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:51

And he was right. SH

 **Sherlock Holmes** 18:51

And I am by no mean affected. I am simply interested in a mind working similar to mine. End of story. SH

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] This is how John H. Watson describes Sherlock Holmes after their first meeting at Bart’s: “So tomorrow, we’re off to look at a flat. Me and the madman. Me and Sherlock Holmes”. From: The Personal Blog of Dr. John H. Watson; entry from 29th of January, called: “A Strange meeting” (=http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/29january).
> 
> [2] From: “A Strange Meeting” (=http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/29january).
> 
> [3] From: The Personal Blog of Dr. John H. Watson; entry from 7th of February, called “A Study in Pink” (= http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/07february).
> 
> [4] From: “A Strange meeting” (=http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/29january). Altered accordingly.
> 
> [5] From: “A Strange meeting” (=http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/29january).
> 
> [6] From: The Personal Blog of Dr. John Watson; entry from 31st of January, called “My new flatmate” (=http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/31january).
> 
> [7] From: “A Strange meeting” (=http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/29january).
> 
> [8] From: “A Study in Pink” (= http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/07february)
> 
> [9] The iconic phrase. One cannot write a Johnlock fanfiction, set in whatever universe, and not use it (IMO).
> 
> [10] Alan Turing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing). His life, work & legacy will be explored further in 'Dead Letter Office'.


	3. Soldier's Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Sherlock treats dead letters like cold cases, John tries not to fall (in love). Only one man is successful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> „Soldier’s Heart“ or „irritable heart“ was marked by a rapid pulse, anxiety, and trouble breathing. U. S. Doctor Jacob Mendez de Costa studied Civil War soldiers with these “cardiac” symptoms and described it as overstimulation of the heart’s nervous system. Long story short: "Soldier's Heart" is the second oldest term for PTSD (= Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

Sherlock Holmes was the best employee I have ever had, because did exactly what _he_ wanted. It might not been what _I_ wanted (or what _I_ initially hired him for) but he was the perfect fit. This madman was the perfect fit: for me, for the dead letters, and the Office.

Because before meeting him I thought, it was normal that Sally always worked well in the morning and Phillip always worked well in the evening. Both had been working for almost a decade for the office before I hired Sherlock, and until his appearance, it had been always like that: Sally had worked perfectly in the morning and badly in the evening, and Phillip was the badly one in the morning and the perfect one in the evening. From Monday to Friday, 12 month a year, four hours perfect, four hours sloppy. No excuses. No exceptions. No explanations. Sometime during their lunch break, it always seemed as if they changed personalities.

Then Sherlock came.

Sherlock did an extraordinary quantity of work. As if long famished for something to work, he seemed to gorge himself on the dead letters. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and nightline, worked by sunlight and by candlelight. I should have been quite delighted with his dedication, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote silently, palely, mechanically. With one exception: when there was no work left, the case closed, no mystery to be solved, then, and only then, he would started shouting: “My brain is starting to rot! I need a case! Give me one!”

Sherlock Holmes not only shed light on the oddities of The Dead Letter Office, and especially, it is working residents: he changed their behaviour, too. Like Molly Hooper, one of our freelance experts. Before Sherlock Holmes I was aware of the fact that she was dedicated to her work, clearly competent, and I thought of hiring her a couple of times, but she was not “visible”. She would shy away from communication with the clients or the experts involved. The first part was actually a pity because it turned out she had a way with people.

The clients would still weep, but they would leave the Office with their spirits lifted and Molly with a smile. I did not know what her trick was: the offering of tea, or the unassuming cloths that do not draw attention away from the letters. If pressed I would say it was her small question after handling the final letter “Can you tell me more about...” and then her silence until they finished their tale. Sometimes clients would call days, weeks, or even a month later to express their gratitude. Alternatively, tell that they found a photo or heard another anecdote or “could you imagine”, and Molly, quiet unassuming Molly, would sit in the Office and listen to their calls. She would hum, and sometimes soothe or smile or once even sob with them, and always, always at one point say, might it be the first or the last words: “I remember.”

This was the most remarkable thing about the shift when Sherlock Holmes showed first up. He made us see, whether we liked it or not. There was no escape; and just as he pointed out our rather particular (and honestly, not that efficient) working habits, he triggered something emotional in all of us, too. It was like a paradox, actually.

The more he focused on The Work, the more we realised that there was more than The Work.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

I mentioned that he worked excessively.

We were not unsuccessful _per se_ before he showed up but we were inefficient. Now, with someone similar to a machine running case file after case file, I had time for my own project. Since I had become the Head of The Dead Letter Office in London, I had wanted to introduce the masses to its absurdity and beauty. The craft of letter writing, the impact of education (yes, even on your very own handwriting), the importance of communication and the multiple reasons for its failure, the untold stories of Dead Letters, all of this and so much more, I wanted to tell.

Now, with Anderson and Donovan in line, Molly as a constant companion for the emotional aftermath of a case closed, I had time to write. When all this happened, it was simply an _idée fix_. Some scribbled notes, some drafts on my laptop, a better outline, and a name: “Bartleby.”

 **Bartleby** is the title of a famous American Short Story by Herman Melville. In the epilogue, the unreliable narrator finally talks about this enigmatic man called Bartleby. After his death, he made some inquiries about his former employee and found out that he used to work in a Dead Letter Office. The narrator tried to make sense of this queer man who started out as an dedicated clerk that turned out to be – how we today call it – clinical depressed. Over the run of some month, his mental health deteriorated so far that in the end, Bartleby preferred not to live anymore.

Yes, if your next question, dear reader, is if I named my project after my very own Bartleby, then the answer is, yes.

Originally, I wanted to go with Terry Pretchatt. I love Fantasy and Science Fiction Novels. As part of the “ **Discworld Series** ”, there is a gorgeous story called “ **Going Postal** ”. It is a heavily influenced by Victorian Steampunk. Very grotesque, very odd, very charming. In “ **Going Postal** ”, a postal worker takes up the task to go down The Office and count all the Dead Letters. It is a never-ending story, as you can easily imagine. Because that is the oddity about the nature of our establishment: No matter how advanced our communication and technology, there are always dead letters. Today, you might call them unsent text messages or non-delivered e-mails. Something went wrong with your upload on social media. And, of course, there are still the classic dead letters.

I actually typed one try of an explanation down on my personal blog one day.

 

> There are letters about love and affection, about hate and crime, tears and war.
> 
> All that is life can be found in letters through times,-
> 
> Like echoes telling us a story
> 
> About (our) past, future and present.
> 
> Starting a letter is like starting a conversation,-
> 
> You have to pick out your words with care.
> 
> Or lash out your imagination.
> 
> Pour your heart out with every syllabus.
> 
> Be the battlefield you created, anticipate, or wished to never ever start.
> 
> Some are never sent.
> 
> The ink, the paper, typed or texted, left or right handed, digital or analogue, language, alphabet, and post stamp.
> 
> Is a postcard simply a short note with a picture in front?
> 
> Or is a text message a digital “hello”?
> 
> Or is twitter a shout out “I’m important” in 140 letters?
> 
> Is a “Dear Diary” just a letter never sent?
> 
> Is an e-mail an e- mail?
> 
> **A letter is more than a letter** **.**

 

The day when I saved the first draft was the 7th of December, the National Letter Day. It was the unofficial holiday of everybody involved in any kind of epistolary. It should draw a spotlight onto the craft of writing letters. There is an increasing interest of the public eye about letters. In the silence of my bedsit in a terrible part of the town, after saving it, I remembered again that there are not “please try again later” in my life. That there were only dead letters.

Even if I preferred it to be otherwise.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew it had begun.

However, if pressed further I might say it all went downhill on a particular November day. It had rained all day; the sky was almost black, and the wind, or more, the storm, was hauling around the city. I had been in a bad temper since I had woken up. My dreams those days were scattered with memories from the death, and so, when I rose up to face the day, my bedclothes were damp and my limps ached already awful. One look out of my pitiful apartment did not improve my mood, and when in my griming stubbornness I made my way to the office, heavily leaning on my cane, I was already close to explode.

The short ride with the Tube was even more annoying than ever: the noise, the smell, the mass of people. Every street musician seemed to play out of tune, every toddler seemed to scream, and every teenage girl seemed to giggle. Did the boys really have to comment on their video game that loudly? An umbrella hit me, a trolley from a commuter almost wiped him off my feet, and the announcements of “CCTV” in action were driving me mad. Even the advertisements seemed to make fun of me. Everyone looking pretty, and attractive, and successful,... and I, making my way through the anonymous masses, battered and bruised, inside- out, pronounced limb because of the sinking temperatures and the general dampness, hair turning grey and so, so, lonely.

 

The weather decreased like my mood over the next couple of days. It had been late autumn for quite some time, and finally, it seems, the temperature had caught on. It dropped over night, unexpected und unwelcome. A cold wind blew through the city of London and everybody tried to stay indoors as long as possible. Especially in the early morning and evening hours, the wind howled like a man in pain. Loud and sharp and nightmarish. Some nights, I woke up from it, and more often than not, it accompanied me like a long lost lover’s memory on my way home from The Dead Letter Office.

The holiday season approached and with it the constant buzz about miracles and spirit and (the old) jolly good times. I hated it. Sometimes I was not sure if I had secretly turned into the Grinch over night. Maybe I had to face it: I was becoming one of those grumpy old men who are constantly in a bad mood, and an even worse temper, and who – secretly deep down – are simply lonely. Because that was what I was feeling: so, so lonely.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

Around this time, Sherlock concluded four cold cases. It became necessary to examine them. It was an important task, and great accuracy was imperative. Having all things arranged I called Donovan, Anderson and Molly from the next room, meaning to place the four letters in the hands of my three experts, while I should read from the original case files. Accordingly, Donovan, Anderson and Molly Hooper had taken their seats in a row, each with a document in hand, when I called to Sherlock to join the team meeting.

“Sherlock! Quick, we’re waiting.”

I heard a slow scrape of his chair legs on the uncarpeted floor, and soon he appeared standing at the threshold of my office.

“What is it?”

“The letters from the four last cases. We are going to examine them before contacting the clients.”

I hold the documents in question up in the air. Not that he should need the reminder. Sherlock was the one solving most of the cases, anyway.

“I would prefer not to.”

It seemed like Sherlock Holmes intended to disappear, probably to go back to his work. I was having none of that.

“Why do you refuse?”

“I would prefer not to.”

With any other man, I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion, scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. However, there was something about Sherlock that not only strangely disarmed me, but also in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me. I began to reason with him. “These are your own letters we are about to examine. It will save us time because one examination will answer for your four cases. It is common practice. Every expert is bound to help examine his case. Is it not so? Will you not speak? Answer!”

“I prefer not to,” he replied in his haughty posh tone.

It seemed to me that while I had been addressing him, he carefully revolved every statement that I made; fully comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay the irresistible conclusions; but, at the same time, some paramount consideration prevailed with him to reply as he did.

“You are decided, then, not to comply with my request—a request made according to common practice and common sense?”

Sherlock Holmes gave me a look as if I was the idiot. I was having none of it; after all, I had been to war. I had faced more trying problems than one Sherlock Holmes, at least that had been my thoughts at the time. Therefore, I tried to reason with Sherlock Holmes.

“Donovan,” said I, “what do you think of this? Am I not right?”

“With permission, sir,” said Donovan, with her blandest tone, “I think that you are.”

“Anderson,” said I, “what do _you_ think of it?”

“I think you should kick him out of the office.”

“Molly,” said I, willing to enlist the in both parts most rational and emotional new addition to the team, “what do you think of it?”

“I think, sir, he is a little bored,” replied Molly with a grin.

“You hear what they say,” said I, turning towards the screen, “battle up and do your duty.”

However, Sherlock offered no reply. I pondered a moment in sore perplexity. However, the work was more important. I determined again to postpone the consideration of this dilemma to my future leisure. With a little trouble, we made out to examine the papers without Sherlock, though at every page or two, Donovan deferentially dropped her opinion that this proceeding was quite out of the common. While Anderson, twitching in his chair with a dyspeptic nervousness, ground out between his set teeth occasional hissing maledictions against the stubborn man behind the computer screen.

 

The urge to punch him (or to hit and then to kiss and then to fuck him in the office) only worsened when this habit increased over the day. Sherlock’s standard answer seemed to be “I prefer not to”. Looking up a term online, double- checking a source, calling a client or answering one, communication with everybody in general, besides “Yes” (2 times), “No” (20 times), his new personal favourite was by far “I prefer not to” (countless times). And no, going for coffee was only mentioned once. Because food or drink, anything what human being would call vital, was just transport to Sherlock Holmes. It seemed to be that on that particular day Sherlock Holmes declared everything else beside his work (and only his!) in the same category: Irrelevant.

 

Some days passed, Sherlock acted as if nothing unusual had occurred. However, his late change in behaviour led me to mentoring him more closely. I observed that he never went to dinner; indeed that he never went anywhere. Yet, I had never known him to be outside of my office. He was a constant figure in the corner. Every morning, at eleven o'clock sharp, I noticed that Molly Hooper would advance toward the opening Sherlock's screen, as if silently beckoned thither by a gesture invisible to me where I sat. The woman would then leave the office, and reappear with some fried noodles or other fast food. With lots of coffee, and something that looks a lot like nicotine patches. He remained as ever, a fixture in my office. If that were possible – he became still more of a fixture than before.

 _What was to be done?_ He would to nothing in the office; _why should he stay here?_ I claimed that I felt sorry for him. I speak less that truth when I say that, he occasioned me uneasiness. The truth is that I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. While Sherlock Holmes became more and more obsessed with dead letters each day, I became more and more obsessed with this man. And one afternoon, the evil impulse in me mastered me, and the following events changed our relationship forever. It was January the 29th of 2009.


	4. Interlude (2): The Game Is On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a fan fiction set in a (Dead) Letter Office. What better way to highlight this fact than to indulge in some epistolary?!

I. Group Chat: **Molly Hooper** , **Sally Donovan** and **Phillip Anderson** (October 2008) _  
_

 

> **Sally Donovan** : He's a freak.
> 
> **Phillip Anderson** : He's a sociopath.
> 
> **Molly Hooper** : Don’t call him that, both of you. It’s not nice. And not fair. And not true, at least, partly.
> 
> **Sally** : Oh, does someone has a crush on the freak. How sweet.
> 
> **Molly** : No. Of course not...
> 
> **Anderson** : When you’re saying it, Molls.
> 
> **Molly** : Don’t call me that!
> 
> **Anderson** : What? Molls. Molly- Dolly. Dovey- lovey.
> 
> **Molly** : You’re drunk. And you’re both wrong. Sherlock is not like that. And it’s not like that either.

 

* * *

 

II. Text exchange between **John Watson** and **Bill Murray** , one of John's old army mates (November 2008) _  
_

 

> **Bill Murray** 09.21 pm
> 
> Hi mate. Coming to the pub tonight?
> 
>  
> 
> **Bill Murray** 08:11 pm
> 
> John. We’re watching the game at the weekend. Interested?
> 
>  
> 
> **Bill Murray** 10:09 pm
> 
> John. What’s up? Haven’t heard from you in a while.
> 
> **Bill Murray** 10:14 pm
> 
> John? At least, answer with y/n. I see that you receive & read the text, you know.
> 
> **John Watson** 10:51 pm
> 
> Sorry mate. Not in the mood. Everything is fine. Don’t worry.

 

* * *

 

III. Text exchange between **Greg Lestrade** and **John Watson** (December 2008)

 

> **Greg Lestrade** 04:12 pm
> 
> Can you not put him in line a bit?
> 
> **John Watson** 04:21 pm
> 
> Who? Sherlock?
> 
> **Greg Lestrade** 04:21 pm
> 
> Of course, Sherlock. Who else?
> 
> **John Watson** 04:22 pm
> 
> Don’t know. Donovan and/or Anderson for being way out of line?
> 
> **Greg Lestrade** 04:23 pm
> 
> What have they been up to again? Seriously, John, I am too old for this shit.

 

* * *

 

IV. Text exchange between **Molly Hooper** and **Sherlock Holmes** (Januar 2009) _  
_

 

> **Molly Hooper** 10:05 am
> 
> You’re sad when you think John does not see you.
> 
> **Sherlock Holmes** 10:06 am
> 
> It’s fine.
> 
> **Molly Hooper** 10:07 am
> 
> No, it’s not “fine”, Sherlock. Let me help you.
> 
> **Sherlock Holmes** 10:07 am
> 
> I do not require your help, Dr. Hooper.
> 
> **Molly Hooper** 10:07 am
> 
> You do, Sherlock. We both know that you do.


	5. Shell Shock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson's report, about what goes unsaid. All is fair in love and war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Shell Shock" = term for PTD (= Post Traumatic Stress Disorder during WWI). In 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11th as the first observance of Armistice Day, the day World War I ended. At that time, some symptoms of present-day PTSD were known as “shell shock” because they were seen as a reaction to the explosion of artillery shells. Symptoms included panic and sleep problems, among others. Shell shock was first thought to be the result of hidden damage to the brain caused by the impact of big guns. Thinking changed when more soldiers who had not been near explosive had similar symptoms. “War neuroses” was also a name given to the condition during this time.

We met at work, but it was not an office romance.

I might have falling in love with him at first sight, and I might have masturbated more about his looks and words and him being Sherlock over the last couple of months that I can count, and yes, we kissed once, but we were never lovers. Further, we were no talkers either. Actually, come to think about it, the term “idiots in love” might be quite accurate.

It had happened in January. Close to my anniversary in the office, come to think about it. End of January, ordinary day that turned out anything but. All day, he had railed me up. His “I prefer not to” that I wanted to throw back at him, with a question, with intend, with an underlying question, “Oh, and what do you prefer?” It was wrong, of course, I was his boss, and instead of daydreaming (and we are not even speaking about my dreams at night) I should have fired him, or get him professional help, or both. Alternatively, at least, ask Greg Lestrade, the head of Human Resources for support.

I never pretended to be a good or wise man. However, what happened in the office on that day, or more accurate, evening, because it was after-office-hours (which does not make it better, only technicality), was tremendously stupid.

 

Of course, what tip it over the edge, or me, was, once again, his “prefer not to”. He should have closed the file for today, go home, do whatever he does after-work (I did not pry, never have I asked if he has a partner, a boyfriend, girlfriend, a significant other, if he was unattached like me, which would be good, and in the other case, I would be happy for him. He was the noisy git; seriously, how did he never notice that I was practically gagging for him? Seriously, the times I wanted to kiss him senseless instead of punching him, they levelled each other out these days.); he refused.

“I’m your boss, Sherlock.”

“Oh, that doesn’t work for me.”

“You’re sure?” This was the first stupid mistake because I added, “Want to bet?”

I registered my mistake the second I felt his eyes on me, when all of his attention is on you, oh it’s intimidating but also very hot. Makes one reckless, or, at least, me. Because his reply, “I never bet”, was full of layers. “But you do, Dr. Watson. Gambling, if I am not mistaken, which I rarely am. So, dear doctor, pray, what are you going to do to me?”

 

How did he end up in my private space, I have no idea. One second, he was at the door, the next second he was caging me to the wall. Or, something, somewhere, I cannot recall everything because I am not Sherlock Holmes, and sometimes I think with my dick, and this situation? Oh, hell, yes.

I do not know who started it, maybe I finally snapped, or Sherlock put his money where his mouth is, quite literal, because we kissed. To be honest, it was a fine line that we might or might not jump over quite some time, to making out.

In a heartbeat, all was lost. We fall into each other. Fingers reaching for each other, grabbing, touching, aching. A kiss, another, a third, all were hard and greedy and so passionate as well as desperate. Our tongues met for the first time, a new taste, and we tried to master the game, and have found each other’s master already.

 

There was no time for second-guessing, no time for reassuring, and no time for asking for boundaries, or sexual past and preferences.

We kissed and kissed and kissed some more.

We grabbed, pushed and pulled, touched, almost buried our fingers in everything that we could reach. Closer, closer still, until we were so close that that we could feel how hard we made each other.

It seemed natural, was natural, to start a rhythm.

For the kissing, for the touching, for the motion of their bodies.

Then, it was not enough anymore; there were new places to discover, new noises to register; all was new and hot and glorious; and it was never enough.

 

Until... Sherlock tried to get rid of my shirt.

Everything just stopped... until he registered that I had stopped.

 

Of course, the part of my brain (more my dick) screamed that I should carry on, but the few remaining brain cells who actually care for boundaries and consent and working relationship, and, yes, if my heart could scream, it would have said: this is not how you want it to happen.

My second mistake was not to address it, or more accurately, I did not have the time to explain it to him. He saw me putting distance between us, and instantly, something switched. From one second to another, not a man but a machine stood in front of me.

Back then, confused and lost and out of wits, I did not realize that this is his coping mechanism, that this is how he tries to deal with things he cannot filter, block, and delete. It is an act, it is not the real Sherlock Holmes, but how should I know that? I knew him for a year, but he was still a rather undiscovered country for me; he was a blank space, and a riddle that I desperately wanted to solve but I knew that I could not and would not do it without his help.

All that I saw was a man that was all businesslike.

 

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

Talking did not come easy to me those days.

As a younger man and teenager, people surrounded me. I played Rugby, I went out with my mates to more parties in med school than I can remember, I chatted with the old lady in my home town as a teen and I was chatted up by women in the supermarket in my twenties. I dated and fucked, I thought about settling down with Mary, maybe a house in the suburbs one day, a baby girl.

All changed with the war.

My therapist said that it was normal. That it is the normal transition from military life back to civilian. That it would take time. One day, I would feel like myself again.

One day, I would pick up the phone when one of my mates, maybe Bill Murray, called and I would say “Yes, sure, mate” and go to a pub with them. We would talk about the so-called normal life, about partners and maybe kids, about the weather and about sport, about how we used to play Rugby, and how we crashed the party of the psychology class back in the early 2000s.

One day, I would not yell at the chip-and-pin-machine at the grocery store, but I would think about cooking dinner and maybe about treating myself with something nice, maybe a pricey wine or a good cheese. There might be a woman that caught my eye. I would be older, the woman would be older, too, but it would not be too late to start anew. When Ella painted me the picture, and asked, “Can you imagine, John? It could happen” I nodded accordingly.

One day, I would admit to myself that normal is boring. One day I would admit to myself that all changed with the war because it made me see that the normal life was only a half-life. In addition, that those days, even when I had a tremor, a shoulder full of scar tissue and nightmares, I would be grateful because they reminded me that I did not miss the John Watson from before the war.

I missed the John Watson I was during the war.

I doubt that the day would come that Ella would call me sane for saying that I missed the war.

And because I could not say what I wanted (and believe me, it was a lot more than missing the war), I did not talk a lot those days.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

I am not in denial, and I was never in denial, at least, not really. I knew that I was attracted to both sexes. It was just simpler to go out with women. Show off the girlfriend, waiting while the bride walks down the aisle, crying at the hospital bed when your wife presents you with your own child the normal, simple life. You can ask your mates for sex tips, the media gives you ideas and pressure for romance, your dad is happy, and no one looks you queer in the eye; you do not end like Harry.

I experimented in my youth with a boy once. He was living in the neighbourhood. We were not from money; I did not go to some boarding school. Local school, local friends, local community. There was the list for the shopping and nothing extra; there was the old woman who was chatty but would call you a brat when you did not smile; the sweets from the old woman were actually disgusting. He, his name was Connor, we ran away together from the yelling of the grumpy old man that always drank and came up in his stupor with the most amazing swear words that made us heroes for a day in school; all we had to do was pretend to be the postman and ring his bell. He was too drunk to notice the difference until he had opened the door. When this happened, he we ran. The house of the old man was on the outskirts, at the end of the town. The street led to the woods. One day, we ran uphill, into the woods, like some many times before, but when we reached our favourite spot in the woods, still laughing and holding our sides, slightly out of breath but so alive, giddy with delight and high on adrenaline, and we fell into the warm grass of a clearing, everything changed.

At least, that is what I always told myself before I went to war.

Okay, it was not that I did that much more in Afghanistan that I dared to do in my youth. At least, when talking about specific acts. Back then, it was just fumbling in the clearing, and later a bit more than that after school, never at our homes, never in public, definitely not at school, where there were far too many people who might find out about us. Later, during the war, while trying to stay alive, one of the ways to feel alive, to reconnect with our bodies, to calm our minds for a second or two, I fucked anyone who was willing. I was not what some civilians might call a “good soldier”, but what made me a “good” solder for those who counted. I never refused a hand, blowjob, or some frenetic rutting.

The first man I ever kissed (and the last, I guessed, I hoped) was Sherlock Holmes.

He was not the first man I fancied though. Maybe he was not even my first love (even I guess, I hope, Sherlock is my last). I like them, Connor and James Sholto. I was attracted to other men I fucked in the army, before I met my latest major and commander (until I met Sherlock Holmes, who was my new commander, in some way, I guess). I only dated women; even when I fucked James, I was engaged to Mary.

War is different. I was a different man at war, and I guess I will always be. I was a good soldier; I never was a good man, not matter what Mary and my dad and the old woman said. I was and always will be what the grumpy old man in my hometown yelled after me when I pretend to be working for the Post Office. Every last swear word. And guess what? I turned out to be him, and when I talk these days, real talk, years down the road, running downhill still, I yell swear words, and most days, I am drunk while doing so.

When I talked or more hinted at it once, Sherlock just commented, “It is what it is”.

I know the poem, now, I guess, at least, that I know it, and I hope against hope that I know what he wanted to say, that it is what it is, and that it is not shit, but love. I hope that he love me, Sherlock, that is.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

As I have said before, my life is divided into two phases, before and during the war. Technically speaking, I have a time after the war, too, but as I am looking back now, I can see that this phase never existed at all. I never came back from war, not really. The John Watson that I knew from before the war never came home. Sherlock Holmes made me realize it was that I did not try to come back because I was never at home in that old life in the first place.

When you wanted to identify the “after the war” -phase, and I know that normal people want to label things and people and dates and figures and all is neat and never blurring around the edges, then the “after the war” -phase was the few horrible months in London after getting shot in Afghanistan and before I became the Head of Dead Letter Office thanks to Mike Stamford’s recommendation.

Should I be honest? It is over, so who cares?

The few months? Looking back, they were similar to the many years before I went to war. Another truth I do not talk about either. They used to call me a good boy. Later they called me a good doctor. Today, they would probably call me a good man (who went to war). The truth is that I am only a good soldier. And “good” means something different at war.

Ella Thompson, that is my therapist’s full name, said in one our first sessions that I used to be a soldier and that it would take some time to get use to civilian life, and that writing about it would seriously help me. I did not need be Sherlock Holmes to realize that the opposite remained true, but he helped me give my understanding a voice. The writing helped me to get use to the realization that I am a soldier and that I am unfit for civilian life. I am a misfit for a half-life, an ordinary, average life, but I am the perfect fit for a madman and his strange world.

If I had the chance, another one, I would talk to him.


	6. Interlude (3): Fixed Point In A Changing Age

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a first draft. This particular chapter is the heart of it: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, kissing in the Office, it's January the 29th...

I. Transcript of an audiofile.

 

Highly confidential.

Recorded on request of M.

Date: 2009/01/29

Location: Dead Letter Office (London, UK)

Persons: **William Scott Sherlock Holmes** (SH); **Dr. John H. Watson** (JW)

 

> Context is SH's increasing attitude to "PREFER NOT TO" which delays and disrupts the working processes at Dead Letter Office.
> 
> However, as the following transcript clearly indicates, JW is comprimised.

 

 

JW: “It’s in the rules.”

SH: “Then the rules are wrong!”

JW: “I’m your boss, Sherlock.”

SH: “Oh, that won’t work on me.”

JW: “You’re sure?”

SH: “Want to bet?”

JW: “I never bet.”

SH: “Now I know that you’re not going to make me.”

 

[---]

 

SH: “Backpedal. Why? Because you bet, Dr Watson. Gambling, if I’m not mistaken. Which I rarely am. So, doctor, pray tell me: what are you going to do to me?”

SH: “Emotion won’t save them.”

JW: “You’re a machine!”

SH: “How predictable.”

SH: “How about ... no?”

SH: “Not interested. Why should I do it when I’m not interested.”

JW: “It’s not about interesting, Sherlock. It’s about ... It’s just what ... you just do it. It’s what normal people do.”

SH: “Normal? Sounds tedious. Dull.”

JW: “You are sure about it? You are not going to do it?”

SH: “No. Not going to do it. Nope.” (Popping the p sound)

JW: “Sherlock.”

SH: “---“

JW: “SHERLOCK!”


	7. Battle Fatigue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnlock @221B. Until the bomb drops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In World War II, the shell shock diagnosis was replaced by Combat Stress Reaction (CSR), also known as „battle fatigue“. With long surges common in World War II, soldiers became battle weary and exhausted. [...] Up to half of World War II military discharges were said to be the result of combat exhaustion.

I met his brother Mycroft Holmes.

It happened on a grey, cloudy February evening in 2009. It was a week after I had kissed Sherlock in the Office. The incident we both had agreed never to speak about again. I had left the Dead Letter Office and walked aimlessly through the streets of London. I was not willing to go home yet. It was an ordinary day until the first telephone in one of the telephone booth rang. Then, my life took another route, when a pristine, rather posh sounding voice, ordered me: “Do you see the camera on your right?”

Always the good soldier, I did as asked and followed the instruction. What I witnessed was rather remarkable: the camera was moving, and then the next (“camera on your right”), until no camera recorded the black car that appeared in front of me. Long story short, I found myself face to face to a middle-aged man who wore a three-piece suit and had thinning ginger hair. I battled on: “That was rather impressive. I will give you that. But... you could just phone me.”

“Dr. John Watson, as you’ve experienced already, I am sure, when you’re familiar with Sherlock Holmes, one tends to need certain ways to communicate without drawing his attention.”

“So, it’s about Sherlock.”

The man’s only reaction was a rise of his eyebrows. I pushed back: “Who are you? What do you want? What is my role in this?”

“Mycroft Holmes. I am Sherlock’s older brother. I worry about him, constantly.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“I wish to remain unnoticed. That is one of the reasons for this way of contacting you. However, it has come to my notice that my brother has made the habit of not only working, but living as well, in your office. And because I assume, and going by your facial expression, I conclude that I was right, it has gone unnoticed by you.”

“What?”

“I am saying that my brother, Sherlock Holmes, instead of living in his perfectly adequate flat has instead taken up residence in your office. Which is illegal, I assure you. Not that my dear brother ever cared about such a thing. However, we have tasks that are more pressing: Which leads to you, Dr. Watson. I want my brother to be back in his flat. I cannot get him away from his job at the Dead Letter Office, but at least I can do my best to assure that, when he is off-duty, he is not in the office. Something, I assume, is in your interest, as well.”

I was stunned. I cleared my throat. Once, twice, after the third time, I spoke “Well. Yes. Sure.”

“Which means: You will talk to him. Persuade him to leave your office and to come back to his flat. 221 B Baker Street, central London, charming apartment; wonderful property owner, Mrs. Hudson. She offered him a special deal. It is an interesting tale. Sherlock will love it to tell you the story, I am sure of it. Of course, I am willing to pay a meaningful sum, adding to the rent, when you keep me informed of what he is up to. Nothing indiscreet, nothing that makes you uncomfortable? Just tell me what he is up to. And, of course, ensure that this nonsense is stopped. Immediately.”

“Not interested.”

“In what: money, Sherlock or both.”

The car stopped before the Dead Letter Office. I dumbly tumbled out on the street. Mycroft Holmes voice sounded smug, when he reminding me: “Time to choose a side, Dr. Watson.”

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

 _What shall I do?_ I thought, while buttoning up my coat to the last button. I heard rather than saw the black car vanishing as if nothing of this had ever happened. _What shall I do? What ought I to do? What does conscience say I should do with this man, or, rather, ghost?_ In the end, it was no question at all. I would face the ghost, my very own Bartleby, and his ghosts. I dragged Sherlock out of the Dead Letter Office and yelled at him and I moved in with him in 221B.

 

Mrs Hudson had closed the door and had left us in the doorway; she would come up later and maybe bring some tea and some biscuits with her (“But only this time, dear!”). Sherlock trotted the stairs to the first floor landing, then paused and waited for me to hobble upstairs. It was a small staircase, wooden; it creaked on the seventh step. After we stepped inside, the noise of the outside world vanished. The Victorian appearance continued partly in the inside. Overall homely, and a bit out of time, just like the man leading the way. The closer we got to what I assumed has to be the entrance to our new shared flat, the more he seemed to slow down. His hands seemed to even fiddling more, and when Sherlock quite dramatically opened the door, I detected a hint of nervousness.

“Ready?”

A quirk of an eyebrow. I could not help grinning when our eyes locked.

“When you are...”

Even when I reminiscence it now, I can hear his voice " _sentiment“._

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

Take Valentine’s Day, for instance. It was Mrs Hudson who’s posture was something between amusement and scolding, when she asked “Oh, Sherlock, what have you done?” She stood in the doorway to our flat. In her hand, she was holding a tray with some baked goods and two steaming cups of tea. Before I could come and help her with it, she shook herself out of her thoughts, and entered the flat more firmly. Then, she fixed my flatmate with a stern look.

“Sherlock Holmes, you, young man are going to clean up that mess. And don’t you dare to make that nice doctor do the work, do you hear me?”

His innocent look did not impress her. She just pushed the tray in my hands, adding, “And don’t let him get away with it.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs Hudson. I was a soldier”.

I winked at her, and she grinned. Sherlock just puffed out some noise and muttered something while he started to pick up the first items from the living room table. Just when standing on the doorstep, she responded: “Don’t overdo the soldier-thing, just saying. He might do it on purpose next time. Live and let live, I say. So: behave, boys.”

Then _she_ winked. I cleared my throat. I did not blush, but Sherlock might have. He definitely turned his back to me to clean the table and our two chairs in record time. It was mostly throwing things from one point to another, but at least, we could sit and have breakfast.

(And yes, oh, how I wished that Sherlock had indeed a military kink. I toyed with the idea to leave my dog tags in the sitting room – just to test the waters – but in the end, I let it be. After all, my madman probably would experiment with them in his private laboratory instead of using it in the bedroom. Too much of a risk. However, looking back, I can see what an idiot (in love) I have been: Because for what else of a reason would Sherlock's face would turn all red out of a sudden? He does not care about a tidy flat, and getting hot indoors in February? Very much unlikely. And Mrs Hudson? Was and is and will be forever more than a land lady; she is a mother figure, and she has seen her share of (sex)life, such a relatively harmless kink? "Sex does not alarm him", so he said. Therefore, the logical conclusion would have been what I hoped, but yes, we were idiots.)

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

There were good days; I believe that we had good days.

Those days were about James Bond movie nights, about Chinese takeaway, about tea and biscuits from Mrs Hudson (but only once, dear!). He yelled at crime procedurals. Oh and how I loved and hated it, when he scribbled comments in the mystery novels I was currently reading. “Wrong!” might be infuriating but at least he did not reveal the murder before I worked it out. This happened on three occasions; one, even claiming that the victim herself had done it. I had added a “Wrong!” myself.

It was all about deductions, experiments, and late-night excursions because Sherlock wanted to check a source, and indexes of god-knows-what.

Even today, I can recall the highlights of his deductions. They were all over the place, for sure, and he and his monologues drove me up the walls, for sure, but it was impressive, amazing, and entertaining. The solution of my just recently started crime novel: “It was the brother; the green ladder, obviously.” The comment to the woman on the telly, wearing pink: “She’s having an affair. Just look at her jewellery”. There were men with gambling habits, and the one secretly into cross-dressing, and the couple on holidays and the man intending to propose but “she will say no”. This interested me, so I inquired further, and I got the complete “sugar daddy, one-night-stand gone wrong, age difference only kinky in bedroom”-story. He ended with, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up marring his son”.

 

OOOOOOOOOOO

 

I will not lie, there were moments during which I hoped we would go further than sharing a flat, a life and a sofa (unless Sherlock was in one of his moods and was blocking the sofa for what feels days, without moving a muscle, and calling it “going into his mind palace”. During such interludes, he reminded me even more of a cat. Lazy git, but gorgeous.).

There were moments like the mentioned above, when I thought: ‘Maybe this time...”, but our time never came. A deduction ended, at best, with a “Brilliant”, never with a kiss. He played the violin but as far as I can tell, he never serenaded me. If he secretly composed a love song for me, then it remained a secret because I never listen to it.

Hell, one morning he walked around the flat in only a sheet! If he had wanted me, that would have been the perfect opportunity. Just let it drop... that would have been a pick-up line I would understand. I played it out in my bed later, in all its glorious details, because I was only a man. A man that never pretended to be a good one.

However, even it frustrated me, oh, I think I was never more sexually frustrated than the few months we shared rooms, and I have been invalided out of the army with a tremor in my dominant hand, so I knew about dire times, and yet, this was special. Sherlock was special, and if sex, relationship, love, was not his area, then so be it.

Sherlock was more than my private assistant; he was more than my flatmate; and even I would only say in public that I might consider him as a friend or even my best mate, deep down, I knew even back then, that he was the brightest star in my dark life. He was the centre of my world, and if I could, I would love to say him that he is the centre of my universe because I would love to see his face (he claims that he deleted the solar system; we have both a peculiar sense of humour).

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

Alan Turing fascinated Sherlock. I can vividly remember the day Sherlock got into contact with Alan Turing’s legacy.

Actually, to be honest, it stroke me as odd that a man like Sherlock Holmes had not heard about Turing’s fate before. Nevertheless, so it was: One day, Alan Turing was an enigma, the next: Sherlock Holmes turned out to be an even bigger one (if possible!).

As I entered the office on that particular day Sherlock was already waiting for me. He was sitting in my chair, not even pausing for a second, and started to read a letter aloud, the moment I had closed the door behind us.

 

> My dear Norman,  
>    
>  I don't think I really do know much about jobs, except the one I had during the war, and that certainly did not involve any travelling. I think they do take on conscripts. It certainly involved a good deal of hard thinking, but whether you'd be interested I don't know. Philip Hall was in the same racket and on the whole, I should say, he didn't care for it. However I am not at present in a state in which I am able to concentrate well, for reasons explained in the next paragraph.  
>    
>  I've now got myself into the kind of trouble that I have always considered to be quite a possibility for me, though I have usually rated it at about 10:1 against. I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual offences with a young man. The story of how it all came to be found out is a long and fascinating one, which I shall have to make into a short story one day, but haven't the time to tell you now. No doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I've not found out.  
>    
>  Glad you enjoyed broadcast. Jefferson certainly was rather disappointing though. I'm afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future.  
>    
>  Turing believes machines think  
>  Turing lies with men  
>  Therefore machines do not think

 

When he stopped with, “Yours in distress”, he looked up and searched for my gaze. Fixed on me, he concluded: “Alan Turing.”

“Okay” said I, when the silence got too heavy for my liking.

Maybe I have not broken it and had instead just nodded and looked at him expectantly. I cannot remember exactly. What I can remember, vividly, was the silence. There were no Sherlock deducing things or monopolizing a dialogue or creating his very own show with his expressive features and figures and everything. He held himself perfectly steady, almost as if frozen in time and place. It was still Sherlock, but what happened to him, and maybe that was, what I said to break the silence:

“My dear man...”

He was startled into motion, and similar to a Turing machine, he got to work. I could never really, truly, understand the complexity of Turing’s invention, even every child today might be able to use it, and maybe I reacted in the same inexcusable way as the people treated Turing back in his days, ... but I am just a man.

Both men, Alan Turing and Sherlock Holmes, they were so much more than that. Oh, they both would probably laugh and might be even straight out deny it, but better, wiser men than I am will proof them wrong – and hopefully make right what other and I have done them wrong: I have called Sherlock Holmes a machine.

And that my memory of this encounter; his first contact with Turing’s legacy should have proofed me wrong. Or, how he reacted when we lived together in Baker Street. He made me watch all the movies and documentations about him and his legacy. When we watched the film “Enigma”. Oh, boy, that was bad! He did not care that Kate Winslet played the lead (“Who?”). He wanted the true story. Not some fictionalized main story with a forbidden love that, of course, is heterosexual. Not some far-fetched spy thriller when the real events were so much more.

“Maybe one day, there will be a movie”, I said. “Maybe one day, the true story will be told. Not the facts and figures, not like a documentary, but about the man himself.”

He huffed, he hated to be mollified, but some time later, I heard him mumble, “He deserved it.”

I only squeezed his hand, but I think he got the message: “We all do.”

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

I find it recorded in my blog that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 2009. Sherlock had received an e-mail while we sat at our lunch, and he had typed a reply. He made no remark, but the matter remained in his thoughts, for he stood in front of the fire afterwards with a thoughtful face, smoking his pipe, and casting an occasional glance at the message. Suddenly he turned upon me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

“I suppose, John, we must look upon you as a man of letters,” said he. “How do you define the word ‘grotesque’?”

“Strange – remarkable,” I suggested.

He shook his head at my definition.

“There is surely something more than that,” he replied, “some underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible.”

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

I made a fatal error in not inquiring further, why Sherlock had housed in the Dead Letter Office for weeks; I read it, our story, as one big adventure.

 

The truth is that Sherlock Holmes was much addicted to cocaine and morphine.

When I first heard, that Sherlock Holmes had a drug problem, my instant reaction was “This man, a junkie? Have you met him?” because I could not believe it. When he called himself a “high-functional sociopath”, I laughed because it seemed laughable. Because, you know, “Have you met him?” I considered “You’re an idiot, John” as some kind of inside-joke or even a weird form of endearment. I shrugged away his phrases of “my body is only transport” and grinned at “breathing is boring”. I found it funny, amusing, charming. Regular meals, regular sleep, regular check-ups, “dull”; Sherlock Holmes was not an ordinary man; he was a self-proclaimed machine; he was married to his work.

When all went downhill, in one of our last talks, Sherlock accused me: “What kind of a doctor are you, John? I am obviously not well.” He was right: Sherlock Holmes was terribly human.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

My final mistake? I fell in love with the myth, not with the man.

 

After all, it sounded like a good story: a man who seems himself as a lost cause, only to find out that he did miss the war. That all I needed was a “Come on, John”, and I would be miraculously cured. Two men cannot be lonely because they are not on their own anymore; now, it is two against the rest of the world. When the genius got an audience, his deduction and brain and mind palace found a purpose, and he could solve cold case after cold case in the Dead Letter Office, and maybe one day the prospect of even becoming a consulting detective, would it not be enough?

 

There is a saying that stars shine only bright in the darkness.

Sherlock Holmes, even when he claimed that he deleted the solar system and everything remotely related to astronomy, was the brightest star. He once called me his conductor of light; in truth, he was the light, and he did not only conduct experiment after experiment, but he led me from the darkness into light.

If I had been a conductor of light, I would have done the same for him.

Before meeting Sherlock, I had typed “Nothing ever happened to me” to the blog that my therapist had urged me to start; I could now claim that there was a madman in my life that called “The Game is on”.

I followed him, always the good soldier, ready, into battle.

 

I had a mission.

I should save Sherlock Holmes.

Instead, everything went to hell.


	8. Interlude (4): A Study In Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock Holmes' list of John H. Watson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both original sources (ACD and Hermann Melville "Bartleby") are from the unreliable narrator's perspective. We, the reader, only get so many informations about Sherlock and Bartleby. Both men (one might even say, all four) remain an enigma through the stories/canon. My fanfiction tries to at least give some minor insights into the inner workings of Sherlock Holmes and the emotional impact of his partnership with John Watson. Because the story is set in a Dead Letter Office, it seems only fitting to use the methods of the epistolary novel.

 I. Sherlock Holmes' list about John H. Watson (part of Sherlock's memoirs; found by John after he has left 221B for good)

 

> **John H. Watson, his limits**
> 
>   * Conductor of light
>   * Calls me “his best friend” (> irrational but not all unpleasant)
>   * Blogging abilities not all together unhelpful
>   * He allows body parts in the fridge (including heads and thumbs!)
>   * Shows interest in my experiments
>   * Excellent tea!
>   * Mrs. Hudson + Mummy approve > have to find a way to prevent them to act too emotional
>   * Isn’t scared by Mycroft (see: did not take the money)
>   * Medical man
>   * GUN
>   * Military experience (Where are the dog tags? Who is Major Sholto?)
>   * Kissing was... good
>   * How can I get rid of his nightmares? They are unacceptable.
> 

> 
> Inconclusive. Needs further study.
> 
> Working hypothesis: **There are no limits when it comes to John H. Watson.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The format/style of the second interlude (= this chapter) is a hommage to ACD "A Study in Scarlet". In the early days at 221B, John Watson formulates a list of Sherlock Holmes' abilities and limits. Partly, because he is fascinated by this odd man, but although because he tries to decipher (deduce ;)) what this man is up to. In canon, Holmes does not reveil his profession (= detective) at the beginning; so, Watson does his own investigation. The famous list is one of his attempts.  
> In my opinion, it seems only decent to remix it. After all, "Dead Letter Office" is not only a fusion but although a meta fiction.


	9. I Lived

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock falls for John, hard. But every story has a Reichenbach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is a homage (beside the music title by ONE REPUBLIC) to the special exhibition at The Museum of London in 2014/15 about Sherlock Holmes. The exhibition was called: "The man that never lived (and will never die)". The premise was - more or less - that you can only kill a man but never a myth. And that Sherlock Holmes became that myth by faking his death and killing his nemesis, Prof. Moriarty, at the Reichenbach Fall in Switzerland. For ten years, the fandom, and, of course, John Watson, mourned the man. A legend was born.
> 
> Every fan of Sherlock Holmes does know nowadys that you cannot kill a man (!) while throwing him/they down the Reichenbach Fall. GRANADA did recreated "THE FINAL PROBLEM", and, as every fan know, stuntmen and the actors themselves shoot at the real place in Switzerland. Yes, they jumped down - and yes, no one died. Even Jeremy Brett who portrayed Sherlock Holmes in this TV series, did parts of the stunts. And no, they did not need 10 years to came up with this stunt, I assure you.
> 
> However, every ACD adaptation has its own Reichenbach. 
> 
> Or, in case of BBC SHERLOCK, multiple version of it. Most adaptions went the traditional route: As in, the transition from man to myth. The other way, that's when you "kill" Sherlock Holmes and welcomes Sherlock. The problem is, of course, the landing; most people fell for the myth, most people would not choose the man. After all, who knows what is hidden by the unreliable narrator John Watson? 
> 
> There's a - IMO - great line in "THE ABOMINABLE BRIDE" in which John Watson says that he turned a drug addict into a Gentleman's hero. 
> 
> And for me, that's the more intriguing question. It's easier to love the myth; to put things or people into a museum (so to speak), but when you unreveal it? When the Game is Over? Was it worth that "he" lived?
> 
> And: WARNING! This is the only chapter from Sherlock's POV. And he's in distress.

Run an experiment.

Results were as predicted.

Mrs Hudson was not pleased.

Deleted her shouting.

John will apologize on our account.

 

* * *

 

Forgot apparently to eat and drink for a weekend.

John was away for a conference in Newcastle.

It seems that nutrition does have a purpose.

When I eat and drink, John does not shout at me and calls me an idiot.

He left me for the weekend.

It is clearly _his_ fault.

 

* * *

 

The fridge is not for thumbs.

The carpet should not be burnt.

Shooting at the wall is _a bit not good_.

Eyeballs in the microwave are unhygienic.

Looking for John’s gun is not safe.

 

* * *

 

John likes my violin concerts. He has not found out yet that I pick the titles with intent.

 _Idiot_.

Have to continue to play.One day, he will understand.

After all, he is not all together stupid.

 

* * *

 

You should not wake people with nightmares.

Or you should not run your personal study with people who have nightmares.

_Irrelevant._

John was trashing in his sleep. He was screaming. There were tears.

I overrule protocol.

It was unacceptable.

 

* * *

 

Boring. Dull. Tedious. Boring.

 

* * *

 

I cannot sleep.

I cannot think.

 

* * *

 

My parents video-chatted with John. It was a disaster. They want to meet him.

_Why is he not scared off?_

 

* * *

 

I do not like not knowing.

 

* * *

 

Alone protects me.

Caring is not an advantage.

Love is a chemical defect found on the losing side.

Sentiment.

I am not a hero.

I am terribly human.

Mycroft is an overbearing brother.

He is the hardware. I am the software.

I am not a machine.

Do I have a master password?

There is a virus in the data.

My mind is a hard drive.

_Why can I not delete certain things?_

Mycroft used to be my backup plan.

 

* * *

 

One should not embark a new relationship in the two years after a therapy.

I hated rehab.

The people were so dull. And all their boring reasons for taking chemical enhancements.

_So predictable._

Every addiction hides an underlying problem.

Bla bla.

 

* * *

 

How can I bribe Mycroft to get me access to John’s medical report?

His therapy is clearly not working.

 

* * *

 

The cold front made John’s war injuries ache.

Will mention a trip to the spa.

Tomorrow will be ideal, I think.

 

* * *

 

I do not have mood swings.

John has good and bad days.

There is a difference.

 

* * *

 

_How can I make the voices stop?_

People think too loud.

 

* * *

 

The stimuli provided by John petting my hair while watching the boring TV show on telly together were intriguing.

Require further data.

I do not like James Bond. Even the newest looks a bit like John.

That _is_ helpful.

 

* * *

 

Mummy called John a “nice Gentleman”.

_Will it never end?_

 

* * *

 

The café downstairs, Speedy’s, has a picture of a waterfall on their fridge.

A place in Switzerland, apparently.

Reichenbach.

_Odd people._

 

* * *

 

John.

_John?_

John!

John John John

JOHN

 

* * *

 

"You walked around our flat in a sheet?"

"Yes."

"Did you wear any pants?"

"No."

"Okay..."

"Problem?"

 

* * *

 

I introduced John to the Secrets of Chinese Food.

How to spot a good restaurant.

I could almost predict all fortune cookies.

There is a Chinese Circus in town.

Maybe I will get us tickets.

_Could be nice._

 

* * *

 

John is irrational.

John is irritating.

John is intriguing.

 

* * *

 

John’s eye colour is not exactly blue.

 

* * *

 

John’s father was a soldier.

John's grandfather was a soldier. 

John's great-grandfather was a soldier.

His great-grandfather fought in Afghanistan, too.

A family of soldiers.

All were called John.

 _My_ John came home to London.

 

* * *

 

A doctor can name all the bones in a body.

John claims that he can name them while breaking them.

John is better at multitasking than predicted.

 

* * *

 

John prefers the blue silk dressing crown and the purple shirt.

 

* * *

 

My sock index is NOT up to debate.

 

* * *

 

We have a usual at the Thai Express.

 

* * *

 

Slept.

Still tired.

Slept some more.

John said I should get up.

Too tired.

 

* * *

 

The cars rush by.

The lights of the street lamps hurt.

The noise, oh my god, the noise.

People. People. People.

 

* * *

 

"Shut up!"

\---

"Be quiet. Don’t move. Don’t think. Don’t breath."

\---

"Shut up, all of you."

 

* * *

 

"There’s nothing wrong with me.

Do understand?

I use my senses, John, unlike _some_ people, so you see, I _am_ fine, in fact I’ve never been better, so just _Leave. Me. Alone."_

 

* * *

 

**In the night when you turn to me**

**In a night of broken dreams**

**I open my heart to you**

**And let it sing, let it sing, let it sing**

 

* * *

 

**You never saw me leave.**

**I did not make a sound.**

**I was too proud to show you my tears.**

**Someday you will understand my reason for leaving.**

**One day I will return.**

 

OOOOOOOOO

 

Sherlock preferred _not_ to leave John, but he knew that it had to be done.

At dawn, Sherlock forced himself to get up from the makeshift bed on the sofa. He had slept poorly, every hour he had looked at his smart phone: for the time, for new messages, for distraction. Now, it was seven o’clock and a new day.

John switches on the radio to avoid to talk in the morning. The news were nothing new. Sherlock switched the radio off.

He drank a cup of tea and ate a baked roll. Mechanically. He donned his pyjamas and dressing gown. The shower helped minimal. He put on his underwear, his black suit and his white button-down; black socks hidden over black leather shoes; he thought about a belt but dismissed it. Battledress. He avoided the mirror. Brushed his teeth, decided to have a shave, decided against it; he combed his hear; it was half past seven, when he finally shaved.

John had never kissed his cheek, or his nose, or his forehead.

He knew that he would have to take his Belstaff with him. John would realize far too soon that something was different if he left him behind. It was June, it would be hot but there was no alternative. Sherlock hid his blue cashmere scarf; refusing to think about the look on John’s face whenever he had wore it. Instead, he grabbed his valet. _Where were his keys?_ Sherlock looked into the mirror in the entrance, while he pocketed his smart phone.

Sherlock closed the door behind 221 B. Mrs Hudson should be still fast asleep; he had given her a bit extra of her herbal soother last night. She had been giddy, hinting that she could always use earplugs, and how happy she was for them, Sherlock had felt a tinge of uneasiness. However, he knew what was necessary. He could never leave Baker Street with Mrs Hudson awake.

While waiting on the pavement, he hoped that no one from Speedy’s has registered his departure and would inform them. God forbid, they could give an exact report in the one occasion Sherlock needed them the same-old, average, boring, normal Londoner. Tom Wiggins knew not to let anything slip. Tom knew how it is.

Sherlock hailed a taxi to get into the heart of his city.

The total number of licensed taxi and private hire vehicles in England increased by 9,3% to 232,200 between 2005 and 2008.[1] 69% of all licensed vehicles in England were private hire vehicles. 35% of the total number of all licensed vehicles in England were private hire vehicles. 35% of the total number of licensed taxis and private hire vehicles in England were in London.

Sherlock thinks that one might say that a taxi is an invisible car. John would love it. It sounds like one of his sensational stories. A taxi driver who tries to raise his pay check by killing passenger. Maybe the killer thought it would be smart; it is smart, brilliant even, Sherlock had to admit. _But who pays a serial killer?_ John would find it a bit not good. Or would he giggle? Would he laugh? Would they both grin madly at each other?

Sherlock tries not to tamp his fingers on his thighs too much and to calm his heart rate.

_Breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out._

The streets of London flew by. The lights were almost hurting in his eyes but Sherlock forced himself not to close them.

_Breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out._

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

Sherlock Holmes was running.

He set foot before foot. With every step, he tried to remind himself that he was running. The clothes were damp on his skin. He was sweating profoundly. After all, there was a difference to chasing a criminal or jogging for fun. Sherlock had not counted the rounds. He could do the math easily, even now, minutes or hours or however long he had been running, later; but it was not about data anymore.

When his thoughts meandered into dangerous territory, Sherlock rushed to identify the passing spots.

 _This is Big Ben, this is Westminster Bridge, this is Southbank, this is Tate Modern, this is XOX, this is Globe, this is Borough Market, and this is this is this_.

One time, it was Jubilee Bridge where he crossed the Thames, one time it was Tower Bridge, one time Sherlock made the extra metres to Bart’s, one time he thought about St Paul’s and how it had been so important that during WWII the cathedral had never fell.

Sherlock Holmes ran for hours through the heart of his city.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

Sherlock breathed in the heat and the sweat.

Sherlock heard the noise and the clatter

Sherlock saw hundreds of faces and stops deducing them.

Of course, the deduction had not stopped appearing in his mind. Sherlock Holmes was not a machine; he could not simply switch it off.

One might say that it was what defined him. That this is what made him Sherlock Holmes: the man with a special power that was still human but almost impossible.

What was impossible was to run away from the thoughts, feelings, memories, and new deductions that were crashing into him. They were all trying to overpower him, but he could overrule it all.

Because when his mind was a computer, Sherlock Holmes had the master password.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

His brother was with him every step, or, to be more precisely, his cameras were.

For the first time, Sherlock was not bothered or angered by it, and not because he was too tired, too exhausted, to broken to care at some point, but because it was a constant companion. It was only an artificial eye, it was not human, it worked with an algorithm, and it was illegal to use it to keep the taps on your younger brother, but was this not what it is? Always has, always will be?

Technical devices to shield true emotions, to prefer a sharp mind than to be led by sentiment, to look at the bigger picture and not care about casualties and narrow-minded people, to live and work and breath in the grey zones of humanity.

 

To be human but only to an extent.

 

They were not ordinary, Mycroft and Sherlock, they did not fit in.

Never have, never will, and while it was maybe not a perfect fit, maybe it was a good arrangement?

When his transport tried to whisper that the arrangement with ordinary human, _John, was close to perfect_ , Sherlock made a sign to one of the cameras.

 

His brother would know the next step.

(After all, Sherlock had made a list. Like his brother had ordered him to do since his last overdose in university.)


	10. Interlude (5): Dead Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every story has its Reichenbach and its final message: "Because, that's what people do... leave a message."

I. Text message from **Sherlock Holmes** to **John Watson** [date: 2009/07/25]

**Sherlock Holmes**

I had to go away, John. I had to test if I could do it ... could do without the work but not without you, John. [Unsent]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The date (25th of July) is chosen with intention: on 25th of July in 2010 (!) the very first episode of BBC SHERLOCK 'A STUDY IN PINK' aired on BBC.


	11. End of War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock leaves John on 25th of July in 2009. He prefered not to quit him, but Sherlock needs to.

Sherlock left me on a Sunday.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

I did not know how and when I ended up in this bar. The bar was one of the old ones that seem chic now. Local, mostly frequented by people around the corner, when a newcomer showed up, might it a tourist or a Londoner who heard about it from someone who knew someone, you know the tale, and then there was first suspicion than surprise. It was not that they prefer silence here. Far from it, there was talk in English, in German, in Italian, in French, without stop, without translation, no introduction or interpretation needed. It was only that they were a tight bunch.

There were the two university students near the door. For hours, they were sitting over their books, scribble notes, and were comparing their thoughts. They had had a strong coffee when they first showed up around midday. Now, it was a carafe of water, with ice cubes and slices of lemon swimming in it; it was all they could afford but it was enough. Even there was still the light of the day; they had turned up the lamp on their table. It wobbled when their discussions got too heated. Probably it was more heat than light, anyway, but neither they nor I cared.

Besides the two young men, and me, there was only the bar man. They majority of the guests were sitting outside in the sun. Couples, bunch of teens, patchwork families, one group that might be exchange students or Italians who had found a new home in London. One never knew; barely someone cared. I definitely did not care.

The man behind the bar was a refugee. Originally, from the Sudan, he only had had a visa for Italy. Even that he had a job here, even he tried to learn the language, and he did not get the UK. All he asked were some coins for his family back home. Not for him, so that he could find at least a bedsit in some even shabbier part of the town like I had used to live when I came back from the war. I did not ask where he slept these days, the man only asked me to repeat my order for a pint. After all, he was still learning the language.

There were no chairs that were the same. A ratty sofa, a table that overflew with flyers and posters and postcards for events; there was no tapestry. The walls were not bare, though, there were graffiti, there were old photographs, and there were bookshelves over bookshelves. I gave up counting the shelves alone after a minute or two; how could one properly say how many books are stuffed into the rooms? There were medical books, many classic literature, dictionaries, comic books, travel guides, bestseller, and old and new, well read with dog-ears, the only genre that I had not spot (yet) is children literature.

Wherever you had come from, whatever your mother tongue was, however wide your field of interest, you could start reading your way back home here.

 

I sat in the bar for hours.

I drank a pint, dark brew. Probably I should have stick to water but it was too late now. There was a song played; there was a laptop with a playlist hidden behind the bar. I did not know the song, I was not sure if he would look it up on the internet when I would come home, even it stroked a chord inside me. _It is Irish_ , I mused. Folk music, but not as upbeat as I associated with the green island. My home.

 

_One step from heaven,_

_One step from hell,_

_There is no saving_

_Unless you save yourself_

 

I could not stop his thoughts from wandering off to Sherlock. The man that had left me and our home.

 

I knew that I would give Greg a call later, or, the anonymous bar man would call him, which was more likely. Greg would fetch me and drag me out of the bar because I would not be as stable as I wished to be on my legs. I would know that I could not blame the war for this.

This was another fight, another battlefield.

My words would be slurred, mostly I would be quiet and tried to carry own, but there would be one, two, or maybe three slip-ups, a mumbled “Sherlock”.

I might be tipsy now and will be drunk later but I am and will be decent enough to know that I could not blame everything on Sherlock. Maybe in a couple of hours though, when my head would be sore, when I would woke up in the foreign sofa in Greg’s sitting room, and all would be rushed back again. Then things might be changing.

Because then it would hit me like a blow.

That almost a year after I had come from war, I would be in a similar position again.

Lost in the vast city of London.

Haunted by ghosts, feeling adrift, without purpose or plan.

Only, unless last time, there would not be a Sherlock Holmes to save me.


	12. Interlude (6): It Is What It Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An entry from John's blog concerning The Fall.

I. Entry of Private Blog of **John Watson**

 

**PRIVATE BLOG OF DR. JOHN H. WATSON  
**

 

Sometimes you did not want to know the end because how could the end be happy?[1]

 

You cannot fix people.

You cannot save people unless they save themselves.[2]

 

There is no magic off switch outside spy novels and no fairytale kiss that gives you eternity.

Love does not conquer it all[3] in grim reality.

 

One might say that in the end, it is only a passing thing... this shadow. That even darkness must pass.

But maybe the darkness was already waiting. Maybe one only thought that light would win.

Because maybe the truth is that no matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness finds the darkness always has there first, and is waiting for it.[4]

 

Maybe it had been doomed from the start.

Maybe _that_ is what it is.[5]

Because maybe there were other stories first.

 

That it was, is, and will be a story about a man who thinks himself as a lost cause.

That it was only about the mystery and one last letter to honour his legacy.

That he remains a man who prefers not to live.

 

Ah, Sherlock! Maybe we were only terribly human.[6]

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] J. R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers: “And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.“
> 
> [2] Inspired by the song “Two Steps From Heaven” by SJ McArdle: “No one else can save you,/ unless you save yourself” from the album “Blood and Bones” (2014).
> 
> [3] Love conquers all (Latin: omnia vincit amor or amor vincit omnia). Latin phrase from Eclogue X by Virgil. Used in BBC SHERLOCK ‚The Final Problem‘ as a code. There is a famous painting by the Italian painter Caravaggio that – surprise, surprise – has a long academic and artistic history of having a hidden/veiled homoerotic/homosexual meaning. Look it up, if you like. It’s quite fascinating (and the “arguments” of certain people that it could never ever been gay... If it wouldn’t been so sad, it would be quite hilarious.). It’s basically a cupid that blessed homosexual love. Yes, there’s a violin, and any parallels to the famous Cupid statue with Mike Stamford in the front in The (Gay) Pilot is pure accident.
> 
> [4] Terry Pratchett: “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds that the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”
> 
> [5] 'It Is What It Is' is an idiomatic phrase, indicating the immutable nature of an object or circumstance. This is commonly used in American culture as a response of acceptance to something that makes little sense or has little to no validity. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Is_What_It_Is). Further, it is a homage to BBC Sherlock’s “The Lying Detective” that might be inspired by the famous poem: “It is what it is” (“Es ist was es ist”, Erich Fried (1979)). Basically, it’s the message that one should not judge or overanalyse things; it is what it is: love.
> 
> What it is
> 
> It is nonsense/ says reason/ It is what it is/ says love//
> 
> It is calamity/ says calculation/ It is nothing but pain/ says fear/ It is hopeless/ says insight/ It is what it is/ says love//
> 
> It is ludicrous/ says pride/ It is foolish/ says caution/ It is impossible/ says experience/ It is what it is/ says love.
> 
> [6] Homage to the famous final exclamation and last words: “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity! (Bartleby, 66).


	13. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John’s army mates start an intervention, Mycroft orders John back to therapy, Harry is a good sister, and we all end up in canon. Or, how Greg puts it: “Not much changed, John.”

The first change after Sherlock had left been that my sister Harry started bombarding me with text messages. Obviously, she had followed my blog and had read the entry about Sherlock.

> Just come back, I was thinking. Live with Clara and me. Have a home again.

Some messages were almost pleading. I checked if she indeed had sent them. My world was really spinning when I got messages like this:

> You have been gone long enough. Just come back.

There were not typing errors, no exclamation marks, no punctuation faces. I did not reply. However, she persisted. For the first time, she was the older sibling. A week after she changed her strategy.

> Don’t mop around, Johnny! Do something!

Or, as if she knew that it was a Friday and I felt again as if nothing ever happens to me, she texted:

> You turn into the old man from our town. Do you want that, Dr. Watson? Get your fat arse up from the sofa! Hell, maybe yell after children if it helps.

Seconds later:

> Don’t tell Clara that I suggested that.

Some days, when the demons did not have me too tight in their claw, I could hear her voice through the words. The snarky comments, the teasing, the concern.

 

I had not seen her in person for a decade, so it was all imagination, but some days it was as if I could almost see her. As if me leaving home forever, going to medical school and joining the army afterwards, only happened yesterday or had never happened at all.

On good days, I imagine not running into her by fate as it happened with Mike Stamford after I had returned to London, but with intent. We would meet, maybe I would invite her to the book bar I had found by accident, and maybe we would not only talk but laugh and maybe even sing-along when "Two Steps from Heaven" would be playing in the background.

Harry would be older. We both are. Lines on her face, time and demons paying tribute; I could not imagine her being the type to dye her hair, so grey it is; short, of course; hopefully, Clara fed her up a bit; _isn’t that what girlfriends do?_ We were never from money; we never cared for style. Therefore, practical clothes, plain, simple.

 _But what do I know?_ I am not the same man I used to be when I left home.

She never called. Maybe she knew that I prefer to text. It would be nice to think that Harry still knew me. Maybe, one day, we will meet again in person. A second chance, a new beginning. I had worked too long in The Dead Letter Office to turn the communication with my last remaining relative into a dead letter, too.

It will not happen today, or tomorrow, but one day, it will.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

The next change happened at work. I did not know when Molly handed in her notice a week after Sherlock, that it would be the end of The Dead Letter Office in London. In less than half a year, it would close his doors forever. When January of 2010 onwards, someone would want to visit us, we cannot be found any longer. It will be as if we have never existed.

Sherlock Holmes was the last employee ever been hired for The Dead Letter Office in London. He, technically, never was fired because Mycroft handed in his notice. Months later, at the end of the year 2009, I would found out what Sherlock was doing instead. He would "return", prominently, on the front page of all London's newspapers, and, then, everyone will know his name and his story. Over summer and fall, however, while all the letters were packed up, the rooms cleared out, people found new positions; it seemed as if he had vanished.

Some days, when I was too caught up in my head, I wondered if I had made him up in my head. Maybe he was a flicker of my imagination. An _idée fix_? My very own Bartleby...

I am sorry. Bear with my reader; I still have a tendency to ramble. Molly Hooper. Molly is a pathologist. On the surface, it might have sounded odd: a pathologist working as a freelance expert for a Dead Letter Office. However, our Dead Letter Office was specialized in War Stories. There is a lot of violence, blood and gore involved. We might have never dealt with their human remains but we were surrounded by soldier’s last words. Moreover, as Herman Melville reminds us: “Dead letter, does it sound like dead men?”

Molly works in St. Bart’s in London now. She has a cat, Toby, wears still horrible jumpers, and I think if Sherlock ever shows up in her lab, she would demand that he brings her coffee and pastry.

Some days, when I was too caught up in my head, I wondered if I had made him up in my head.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

While all of this occurred, I was still hoping against hope that I would find a way back into the old days.

After all, being stubborn is one of my best qualities. The army was my second family; the world I have known for years; I almost lost a limp and I lost more familiar faces and John Does than I preferred, but during those days, I still wanted to neatly put it into boxes with the label: “War”. I am not only a soldier, I am a doctor too. I did know that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder exists. These days, unlike the wars in the old days, PTSD is an official diagnosis. Sure, there still might be some military leader who claim that “Keep calm and carry on” might be the best treatment and that soldiers with mental health issues weren’t “true” soldiers because soldiers aren’t like _this_.

In one of the courses during military training, we got a short overview of the history of PTSD. It wasn’t that new for me, after all, I had my medical training. However, when it brought me again to mind that approximately half of the soldier coming back from World War Two struggled with what we now call PTSD, it hit home. I shuddered when I listened what back in the day, medical personal thought to be adequate treatment; how the only focus was to bring them back to war, to transform them back to the good soldiers they once were. Not once, it seems, it occurred to the people in charge back than that the men and women got “soldier’s heart”, “shell-shocked”, or “nostalgia” because they were good soldiers.

Or, you know, fought for women’s rights. Or, believed that black lives mattered. Or, that queer rights are human rights.

PTSD is more than a mental illness only found in good soldiers. Actually, it’s more often diagnosed by women than men. And, one of the reason why physiatrist realized that it had to more than a “soldier’s heart” was that people suffered with similar symptoms after railway accidents. There is no such thing as “hysteria” but there are suffragettes who suffered from “nostalgia”. At least, that is what time will tell us. Back then, in (post-)Victorian times, when good soldiers cannot be haunted by the war, how can good wives turn out to be traumatized by society?

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

The first person with PTSD I met was Tom. Tom was only some years older than me; he had let his hair grew but I could still make out the military cut.

We were often in the same group. It been some years since I last had worked with wood. In my youth, in the small town I grew up, it had been normal. Nails, saw, hammer; I knew my way around a working space. My father had shown me how to handle the tools; proud when I managed; angry when Harry wanted to try it, too.

Tom worked often on practical things. I followed his lead. After all, I had no family to come home to, a wife to surprise with some boxes for accessories, or to put a smile on a boy’s face with a wooden toy. I remember that the day before I heard about his story by accident, that I admired his newest project, a play house. I had admired the blue prints, had listened to his plans for the interior, had surprised myself by even suggesting some things, so infected was I by his enthusiasm.

I sometimes wondered why they all ended up here. Tom, so sometimes thought, did not seem mentally ill at all. What I witnessed was a man determined to be released soon. What I observed was a man that went to the therapy sessions willingly, who never questioned the prescribed medication, who had a plan. Surely, all the gifts for his family showed that he was a good husband and father, and, even he had grew out his military cut, I could detect a soldier in a crowd.

Tom had beat up his wife.

Tom had scared his children by doing so.

I overheard a conversation in the floor. It wasn’t sure that his wife would give him a second chance. There was the chance that he would never see his children again.

From one second to another, from good man, husband and soldier, to a monster.

A man who lashes out.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

The second person I met with PTSD was a man called Mr. Carson.

He was a widower, retired, in his eighties. He had worked with cars since he started out as a mechanic when he had left school at the age of 14. His wife died in a car accident, Mr. Carson had been the driver; it wasn’t even his fault, he might be old but he knew his way around cars; it was his second nature.

It did not matter: logic has nothing to do with emotion.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

The third person was myself.

And damn, I was so close to lash out when Ella gave me the diagnosis.

Of course, I wished for a magical cure, an off-switch, some words that made it all go away.

Month later, when I met Mycroft Holmes, I imagined a different outcome of all the mess: that he would not only give me the complete picture about Sherlock’s demons but also told that my were all in my head.

It was fucking ironic, come to think about it.

I talked myself and my madman into some tale of romance and adventure. Seriously, if I can picture Sherlock as a hero instead of a drug addict, why can I not be an ex-soldier addicted to danger? It could be all like a spy novel, not unlike ‘Enigma’ instead of ‘Turing’; the tremor in my hand as a sign that I miss the war, and how Sherlock would fix that for me. While he fixed me, he would fix himself. A perfect equation.

The truth is that there were as many signs that something was terribly wrong with Sherlock as there were PTSD symptoms in my behaviour.

It is simply not true to diagnose PTSD based on a tremor and nightmares, it is more than a limp and problems to adjust to “normal” life. And to hope (against hope) that “The Game is On” would fix it? That’s a fairytale (for adults).

You cheat on your partner, you leave your kid, you beat up your best friend, you yell at the chip-and-chain machine and your landlady, your lick your lips and flirt on every possible target, you have nightmares and memory loss, you drink too much, your emotions are all over the place. You think that you can only function when you’re at war. However, what you do when you act like a soldier now is not a good soldier anymore. It’s an act.

When you only think about uttering lines like – “I’m an army doctor which means I could break every bone in your body while naming them.” – don’t get a publisher, go to therapy. There’s nothing fun about it. It’s not charming, sexy, or anything else. It’s not a writer out of control. It’s a statement of a man who went to war, and never came home. Who has the mindset that war is not an interlude but an alternative universe in which all makes sense (even, it clearly does not).

Don’t make people into heroes.

That remains true for detectives as well as soldiers.

When you observe such incidences, get help. You cannot fix people, you cannot save John Watson or Sherlock Holmes, but do the reasonable thing: don’t theorize but talk about it.

The tremor or a limp? That’s an inconclusive diagnosis.

That’s – oh, and John can almost hear Sherlock’s voice – Anderson’s level of stupidity, or Molly’s wish for fluffy fairytales.

It will backfire – sooner or later – because when a trigger is pulled again, you will shocked. Because you will believe that you could cure it.

You will be reacting like John Watson did when he was faced with the truth about Sherlock Holmes. You will be saying: ‘This is not the John Watson I know.’ And you be right: He is not the John Watson. Because he never was this John Watson in the first place. Or, to be precise, he was more than what met the eye.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

When I thought - again - that nothing ever happens to me, my mates skipped the calling part, and stood one evening at my door. It was a Friday evening at the end of June. They called it an intervention. Bill was leading this mission, _of course, he did._

Bill, like me, had done two tours in Afghanistan. He, like me, came from a small town. For people like us, there were not many options back then. He signed up for twelve years, only eighteen years old. He was fed and housed, got his driving licence free; it was not a bad deal. He was not overly patriotic but he loved the town he grew up. When the twelve years would be over, he would buy land there, he wanted to become a farmer, settle down, marry and get children. The easy life, the normal life; twelve years as an interlude.

He met at war his wife. She was medical personal, just like me. That is how I met him. Her name was Nathalie. She was one of my nurses. When you are at war, everything is heightened. The stars never shine that bright than in the Afghan desert when you wait for the next bomb attack.

Bill and Nathalie have two children. Two little girls, Emily and Lilly. They got married after the first was born; Bill had to go back to Afghanistan. When he got back, the countdown started. It had been his last tour abroad. The last time in active combat. His last war. Whatever happened afterwards, he would only saw the war from the sidelines. From newspapers and documentaries, from reports of fellow soldiers, from his own memories. The second girl was born. The farm, they intended to buy when they both would come home burned down. It was a lightning strike. Bill made it home, unlike me, unharmed. He did not lost a limp, was not scarred on the shoulder or in the face, and he still knows the dirties jokes.

Bill never went back to his small hometown. His wife is still serving five years in the army. She will continue to sew up patients, to calm them down and to take deep breaths and to say “welcome home, soldier”, she will tell them how to take their medication, she will see blood and gore and violence, and she will count the patients, she could not save.

Bill works for the police forces these days. He never returned to the quiet country life. After all, a lot can change in twelve years.

 

I prefer to think that the intervention in June of 2009 was James’ idea.

James Sholto was primarily our commanding officer. In 2009, his unit got under attack. Afghanistan, again. One minute the stars were bright, the next, the dreams of the young soldiers of coming home, lives waiting ahead of them, are gone out. He was the only survivor. Whenever my war injuries hurt me when the weather turns for the worse, I remember James and I battle on. We were all good soldiers.

I know that the families of his dead soldiers try to kill him. I know that there are days when he wishes that they would succeed. I know that he knows that they will not. They are civilians, and we are soldiers. Only soldiers can kill soldiers. It is one of the rules of war. When James wants to escape the war, he has to leave it. Moreover, with leaving it, I mean he has to kill himself. The war only ends when all soldiers are dead. So long, the families will threat him, the soldiers will haunt him, and he, himself, will torture himself. Some days, I fear for him, and then I chide myself, after all, he was my commanding officer, he, James was a good soldier. That is what it is.

Nathalie, Bill, James, me, all the soldiers, we learn that war is never an interlude.

James might not be commanding anymore but he always knew best how to lead people. Bill, on the other hand, was, is, and will always be, our motivator. Like he used to drag us out to play cards, or to initiate a competition in who can tell the dirties joke, he now took no “no” for an answer. Actually, he did not even ask. Not everyone of our unit came home but we all go together until the end of the line.

 

Therefore, I ended up in a pub, watching some match.

By sheer chance, Greg happened to be there as well. As I said, it had James written all over it.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

Mycroft ordered me back to therapy in July of 2009. There is no other word for it. I came home, been only to the shops, and there it was: Ella’s card and - handwritten on its back - day and time.

The first appointment, I did not say anything. It ended with her handing me a book.

“I read your blog”, she said as I raised an eyebrow in silent question. “In particular, your entry on National Letter’s Day in December. You spoke about the importance of letters, how one can deduce the personality from one’s handwriting, and about the various ways of communication. I remember that you said that you wanted to start a project about Dead Letters. The project’s name is Bartleby, is it not, John?”

Even the name, Bartleby, could not rouse me.

“I thought that it might be good for you when you read the original story again. If you have not done it yet. What do you think, John?”

I only picked up the book and left. There was no need to wait for a new appointment. Mycroft would do it.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

When I started re-reading Herman Melville’s “Bartleby” that evening, I could not stop. I wanted the boss to see reason, to read the signs, to prevent what I fear to be happening: another lost soul. I smiled melancholic when I read the “I prefer not to” again. Only now, looking back, I can see that “prefer” only means “wish”. It is a potential, maybe a starting point, but nothing set in stone. You could still stop the train of thought, the events from happening, to cut a bad habit.

In therapy, I learned a relaxing technique that is a form of self-hypnosis. It aims at telling you a different story. Instead of “I prefer not to quit”, it could be “I will not quit you”. Psychology says that when you repeat it often enough, a change is possible. Apparently, all you have to do to brighten up your mood is to look in your mirror every day. All you have to do is smile. It could be fake, you do not even have to count it as a smile, but form your lips as if you would smile. Maybe, if you are brave enough, mumble to yourself: “Today is going to be a good day”. You can let your memory and your subconscious work in your favour. Turn the tables, so to speak.

The most important lesson was what I learned: you can tell your own story. You can author your own life. There is no script to stick to, which is fucking terrifying. And quite exciting. And fucking terrifying. I am a story teller, I can write our own happy ending.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

I went back to doctoring in December of 2009. A nice woman called Sarah hired me. General Practice instead of Trauma Surgery.

“You are clearly overqualified. It might be a bit boring for you, John, after all that”, she said, while skimming my CV. “Boring is good. What I need at the moment.”

I hold back myself before I could add the line of “Exactly what the doctor ordered”. I resisted flirting with her. Hyper arousal is one of the symptoms of PTSD – I did not actually want her, or the war either – it is a fact I was surprised to learn about in university myself. Being horny, acting as a human trash can, saying “fuck”, basically wearing a lot, licking lips, palming your crotch, flirt shamelessly – that’s not the real you.

One mate from my unit, had girlfriend after girlfriend. He could not even remember her names. At our Christmas Party, he offered to walk her dog as a peace offer – and she had not even a dog! I handed him Ella’s card discreetly. Colin was not a bad boyfriend, or a good boyfriend with a bad habit, he was a good (ex-) soldier with PTSD.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

Greg got a job as a DI. This sudden change of profession had Mycroft written all over it.

“As Sherlock’s handler”, he said.

This did not sound like a denial. We met in the book bar I had found on the day Sherlock had left by accident. Over the last couple of months, I had come more often here. I actually had started to pull out some books and read them. There was something comforting in escaping in the fantastic worlds of Tolkien & Co. On this Friday, it was the first time since June, since someone mentioned Sherlock by name to me. It was a new year, the second week in January of 2010, and Sherlock Holmes was a consulting detective apparently.

A consulting detective that needed a contact at the Yard.

“Someone who takes up with his shit”, was Greg’s dry commentary but he was smirking.

His divorce was finalized. He had been away over the winter holidays, somewhere sunny, because he was tanned and clearly more relaxed than I was. Even that they got the package deal – Anderson and Donovan – did not seem to bother him much.

“They are still idiots, they still shag, and Sherlock still loves to point both things out. Not much changed, John.”


	14. Interlude (7): The Final Problem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson writes a love letter to Sherlock Holmes. And hopes that it won't turn out to be a dead letter, too.

I. Letter from **John Watson** to **Sherlock Holmes** as part of his therapy [unsent]

 

Sherlock Holmes

221b Baker Street

Marylebone

London NW1 6XE

 

 

Dear Sherlock,

You are no enigma, Sherlock. No matter how often you claim to be one.

 

I do know you. I see you. I can decipher you.

I do not need to look for emotional, social and behaviour clues.

 

You are an open book. I can read you in plain text:

You are scared. You are out off your depth. You are terrified.

You do not think you are lost. You think you are a lost cause.

Instead of facing your emotions, you pretend not to care.

 

You, Sherlock Holmes, you chose the easy way out: To prefer not to.

No work, no clients, no riddles.

No food or drink or – god forbid – sleep.

No 221B, no friends or family.

To sum it up: You prefer not to live.

 

Sherlock Holmes preferred not to do _anything_ anymore.

I, John Watson, would prefer _everything_ with you.

 

I did not know what I missed before I met you.

I was broken, and so, so lonely.

 

We were surrounded by dead letters, Sherlock.

We were surrounded by dead men, Sherlock.

We were running out of time. It was a losing battle.

We worked in a Dead Letter Office, Sherlock.

 

I denied it back then. I was in denial.

I was running out of time, too.

 

You know it. I know it now. We all know it.

Greg, Molly, Sally and even Anderson. Harry, my army mates, your brother, and yes, of course, Mrs Hudson.

I was depressed. I was suicidal. I preferred to function.

Like a soldier in my very own battlefield. Like a machine.

 

I understand _you_ because _I_ have been there.

You did not fix me. I will not fix you.

You cannot save people unless they save themselves.

 

But how I wish I could help you, Sherlock.

 

I wish to help you,

not because of "pay back" or out of "compassion",

not because I took the hypocritical oath, or because I was a soldier and we go till the end of line,

but because **I love you**.

 

So please, **Sherlock, my very own Bartleby** , come home.

Yours, John

 

P. S.: I will write a book. Ella thought it would be a good idea that I write about the things unspoken. I am going to call it "Bartleby".

P. P. S.: Not that it probably will of any interest of you, but maybe I am wrong, and it actually interests you, anyway, this is the first paragraph:

"I am a middle-aged man. The nature of my employment, for the last decade, has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom, of yet, nothing, at least that I know of, has even been written. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and, if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other men, for a few passages in The Life of Sherlock Holmes, who was the strangest (but best and wisest) man I have ever saw, or heard of."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The adress I used in this chapter is the 'The Sherlock Holmes Museum' in London. You can actually really write letters adressed to them/Sherlock Holmes and they answer (according to the internet. I have never tried it myself.). During the BBC SHERLOCK's hiatus between series 2 and 3 many fans left notes/letters at the museum and at Bart's Hospital in London with the - today iconic - "I believe in Sherlock Holmes".
> 
> To write a letter is actually a true method used in therapy. 
> 
> "THE FINAL PROBLEM" is the case in which ACD "killed" Sherlock Holmes.
> 
> A/N:
> 
> TODAY, as in TODAY, Alan Turing's letters were found. After more than half a century, by sheer luck, they were found in the cellar of The University of Manchester. Yes, I would never joke about such important things. I read the article in THE GUARDIAN after I posted this chapter. 
> 
> I don't care if "DEAD LETTER OFFICE" will turn into a dead letter; finally, at last, Alan Turing's letters can be delivered, read and published. There are even letters from Bletchley Park (yes, code breaker during WW2!) and one 'Can machine think?'. 
> 
> My fan fiction featured prominently Alan Turing's life & legacy. My very first interlude had the text exchange between the Holmes' brother mentions Alan Turing; the last interlude, the love letter from John to Sherlock, starts with "You're no enigma"; there are many more scences in the chapters inspired by this sadly mostly unkown hero --- however, that does not matter.
> 
> What matters is that he lived. And that his letters did not turn out dead letters. If a reader happens to ask why I wrote such an odd story or why I thought it was a story worth telling? That's why. 
> 
> We need people who bring letters home. Who can tell people's story. And who deliver their last message. 
> 
> In real life... and in fiction. The latter, we call them reader. As long as people read, stories don't "die". And a place where you can found such stories, you tell and retell fictionalize stories? And where you can read them, over and over again? An Archive (of Our Own).


	15. Parade's End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's 29th of January in 2010.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> Now, in "Parade's End", it's time for another meeting, another January, for Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.
> 
> "DEAD LETTER OFFICE" started as an Alternative Universe (Dead Letter Office) to morph into a canon fix it BEFORE (BBC) canon happened. Hence, the divergence ;)
> 
> On a more "metaphorical" level, one could read - but there is no need (I only like complicated things :P) - the setting as fandom. After all, this story is posted on an ARCHIVE of our own. You have a story that needs fixing, characters that deserve a better ending, etc. 
> 
> And as "Dead Letter Office" reminds you over and over again: You can read your way back home. Or, here, you can author your own story. Or, as long as you read and write Johnlock, so long they are alive. 
> 
> So long, it's always 1894. Or, in BBC SHERLOCK case: January, the 29th.

I visit Russell Square on a sunny but freezing cold January afternoon. I left the office a bit earlier than usual and surprised myself when instead of taking the short cut to my flat, I entered the park.

I can see the other people and enjoy the environment. I smile at the toddlers chasing a dog, I feel with the many students from the university and college close by who seem to be deep into discussion about heavy textbooks sprawled all over some benches. Now I have a smile for the tourists with their cameras and their guides at hand and grin when I spot  _London A-Z_.

It does not even hurt to observe the professionals in their bespoken suits close to running through the paths who are only focused onto their work; not blinking an eye when colliding with a passant; a sorry tumbling from their lips, which could be for the very important voice on the smart phone instead.

I have just reached the crossroads in the middle of the park, slowing down a bit to decide which way to use to the exit, when an all too familiar voice calls for me: “John! John Watson!”

I turns back -- and a man stares back.

A man I recognize instantly.

It's Sherlock.

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

Sometime later, we are sitting side by side on the bench in the park. We decided non-verbal to postpone the first conversation after months of radio silence and instead buy take-away coffees in a nearby café. However, now it's time.

“Are you still working at the dead letter office?”

“No, doctoring now. The office was closed down in fall. I work as a local GP. It is useful, regular shifts, nice colleagues. God, I hate it!”

It is the first time that I admit this loud, and it is so liberating that I start laughing. Some seconds later, after a double check, Sherlock joins in.

“I don’t have to ask what you’re up to these days. The papers are full of it. Consulting detective, as you wanted. And I don’t even have to ask what that means. The Great Sherlock Holmes...”

Sherlock looks torn between being proud --- and a bit abashed (and slightly guilty, but that might be my wishful thinking). However, I do not believe in higher powers, but I believe in Sherlock Holmes. And when I would be religious man, I would say that it is fate. Whatever it is that let us meet and crossing paths over and over again, I can decipher a message now.

Therefore, I take Sherlock’s hand.

“You are Sherlock Holmes. Not the man I met two years ago, but I think that is a good thing. After all, I am not the John Watson either...”

Sherlock looks down at our joined hands.

He squeezes them lightly --- and I squeeze back.

“I just thought how much changed. Last year ..., ” I murmel and clear my throat.

Talking does not come easy to both of us. In particular, when it is about us. However, it is not January 29th of 2009 anymore. Its one year later. Probably we will never be the most talkative of men, but we are alive and we can learn. Because as long as you come back, you can fix your problems. As long as you do not give up, there is hope.

Therefore, I take action. I battle on, and I hope that I have read the signs correctly: I take our joined hands and press a kiss on Sherlock’s.

A fleeting touch. Now, it is Sherlock who clears his throat and then starts to talk:  “I could need some help."

 “With the detective business?”

"Mmm. Yes, I read your blog..."

"You read my blog..."

"As I was saying, John, do keep up. You could write about the cases. I cannot imagine that you would be worse than the press. Or, this sensational literature you used to read. Clients can contact us; I could easily deduce some information about them beforehand, or even solve them from our living room. We won't waste our time with something below a 7. You will accompany on cases, of course. Anderson and Donovan have learned nothing. Just yesterday... anyway, irrelevant. I could need an assistant. As a conductor of light your are quite useful. And to handle with the paper work. And your medical training would be... good. Our line of work has an element of danger. Which your history of military service would be beneficial. I cannot promise you regular working hours, but I can promise you that you will never be bored."

"So... you're offering me a job."

"Correct."

"As your..."

A flicker of a second later, Sherlock rushes to complete my sentence.

"Partner."

While Sherlock has proposed his plan of our - once again - shared life, his cheek had flushed considerably. I am a doctor; I know that the cold January air is only partly responsible. It is a good look on him; he looks well, healthy.

Now, in 2010, I know that Sherlock's pale skin was an indicator of his neglected body. I know that hidden under the Belstaff and the button-down are the puncture marks of long drug abuse. That there are even more scares, invisible, in Sherlock's soul.  

When I see Sherlock today, I see the man. A man who I am not able to save unless he saves himself. A man I cannot fix but he will not let him fix his problems with a fix. It will be a never-ending battle, like my own war in his head, but we both deserve a Parade's End.

Therefore, I do not surrender; I just let some ghosts rest. I am a doctor, a soldier, a writer, and a man who is old enough to know that they will never really been gone.

From time to time, they will haunt me, from time to time, they will haunt Sherlock, but together one is not alone in the darkness, together, one can lead the way and one can follow, one can shield and one can protect, though the world explode, we will survive.

"Okay. And what is with 221B?"

Sherlock scratches with his polished black shoes in the sand of the path. He mumbles:

“Mrs Hudson would be pleased to have a tenant like you. She mentioned how nice man you are, actually.”

“Only Mrs Hudson?”

I cannot keep my amusement out of my voice. I can picture it far too easily already: how we will come home because Baker Street is always our fixed point in a changing age. Mrs Hudson will be delighted; will offer to bring some tea and biscuits, but only this once and she will mention how happy she is that they finally have sorted it out. That she had knew it all along, of course, her two Baker Street Boys, and she would only hint that Mrs Turner has two married ones, and, oh, how lovely! Really, Baker Street would fall if Mrs Hudson would not be there.

As if on cue, Sherlock speaks again: “But I should warn you: I am not an easy man to live with.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I’m a queer one. As people have told me before on numerous occasions. Quite correct, I’m afraid.”

“Good. Good that I am bisexual and attracted to danger, then. Addicted to it, you might even say.”

“Good. Yes, quite good.” 

 

OOOOOOOOOO

 

We can show how much we are in love.

We hold hands when we leave the park.

We have not "properly" kissed yet, but I know we will.

It will happen, sooner than later, in our rooms in Baker Street.

Because this is our home, and, from now on, our work place too, for: Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson, consulting detectives.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Last but not least: I prefer that my fan fiction won't turn into a dead letter, too. Any form of constructive critism is welcome. Kudos, comment, likes, reblogs, whatever... Thank you for reading!


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